Slackers

 Speaking of very dark comedies, we watched Slack Bay (2017). It's a French period piece set between the wars (?) in the picturesque seaside town of Mont St. Michel. With cannibals.

It starts with a family of rustic mussel picker coming home from the beach. A roadster filled with vacationers drives by, commenting on their picturesque-ness. while the pickers grumble about tourists. The tourists consist of an artistic man with a hunchback and odd, spastic gestures, his wife and two daughters and their cousin. Also along are his flamboyant aunt (Juliette Binoche) and his wife's clueless brother.

Down by in the dunes, an extremely fat detective is looking for clues about the recent disappearances in the area. He has a tendency to lie or fall down on the ground and get stuck there, requiring his assistants to prop him back up.

And the family of mussel pickers? The patriarch is known as the Eternal, because he operates the lifeboat that has saved hundreds. Their older son is a somewhat goofy guy named Ma Loute, and the younger three sons are hellions. Oh, and the mother seems to spend most of her time cooking and serving up the corpses of the tourists that they kill.

The Eternal and his son help tourists cross the Bay to the island (I think?). We meet them resting on a boat, but when it comes time to cross, they scoop the tourists up in their arms and wade across. Cousin Billy seems to enjoy getting carried across by Ma Loute - he or she claims to be a girl in boy's disguise. She even crosses over dressed as a girl. It seems that Ma Loute is falling in love with her, until he puts his hand under her one crossing and discovers that she or he has balls, and gets disgusted. Looks like he's for the cooking pot.

This isn't a hilarious comedy (although knowing French might have helped), but it's very silly - except for the cannibalism. Absent that, it's more or less a simple comedy of manners, with some absurdist touches. SPOILER - the detective gets gas, inflates even more, and sails away like a balloon. Or maybe it's a tragic love story of a big eared cannibal and an upper-class teen transvestite. Or maybe it just is what it is.