Reviewer: Hope

Yes, Alex was hot for everyone in this movie. That included Alfa his sister, Jeanne his mother and Jean-Louis, who did a lot of bedhopping himself. We think that Jean-Louis on his previous visit was the mother's lover, but got Alfa pregnant and also seems to have slept with Alex, in passing. It also seems that Alex and Alfa have a longstanding sexual and emotional relationship.

The father's early death, the isolation of the inn seem to have contributed to this closed circle of relationships. We're also quite sure that Alex is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And we thought Michael had problems.

The film starts with Alex returning home from a sea voyage. We discover later in the film that the father, who looked just like Roy, was a sailor and drowned 15 years before.

Alex expects his mother to meet him, but Jean-Louis is there. They haven't seen each other in 9-10 years. His mother and sister arrive, they all go back to the inn. The inn is in financial trouble - and having Alex around scares away the only patrons. Alfa and Jean-Louis pitch in to help - Alfa also has an outside job at the local bar from which she contributes to the upkeep. Alex lounges around decoratively, and Alfa gives him grief about it. There's tension between the mother and Alfa because Alfa has ambitions for the inn and Jeanne has really withdrawn into the solitude, not wanting to have the inn full of strangers. They are also in conflict over Jean-Louis.

There's tension between Alfa and Alex because he's unreliable - he takes off for months, shows up but doesn't do any of the work and then disappears again, and also because they both seem ambivalent about their intimate relationship - one reaches out and the other pulls back, as in the tango scene. But they always join forces to resist outside threats - like the fight in the bar. Alfa is extremely protective of Alex, and both Jeanne and Alfa seem to put up with Alex's odd behaviour without question. Alex is just like that.

There's tension between everyone and Jean-Louis because of the above sexual history, but especially between Alex and Jean - Louis. The dark-haired German girl just turns up at the inn because her bike falls apart., it's not explained further. She and Alex drift into a relationship - Alex seems to need someone to sleep with. In the scene over the dinner table, she says she's never seen a family who loves each other so much. Alex translates this as a family who's in love with each other, the sexual connotation, and dares Jean-Louis to correct his translation.

Jean-Louis offers his money to Alex to pay off debts so that the mother isn't worried by the debtcollectors who have threatened to break Alex's legs. The mother refuses financial help from Jean-Louis, despite the bank getting on her back, but eventually takes it from Alfa, who assumes the mortgage with Wilfrid. Not from Alex, despite the scene where he throws all the money on the kitchen table and implies that Jean=Louis had been trying to buy his sexual favours.

Such brains as exist in this family belong to Alfa, who ends up with a fairly normal life, married to Wilfrid and running the inn and having a baby. We find out that Jean-Louis got Alfa pregnant on his previous visit, and she had an abortion, in the scene where Alfa tells her mother about Wilfrid, and that this time she's keeping the baby.

[ Note - Alex also kind of hits on Wilfrid, who bought him a beer at the bar].

The mother finally lets go of the dead father - the unpacking the closet scene and wanting Barbara to have the sailor's jacket- and the inn which had been their home - and literally moves on, loading all her stuff into Alfa's car. After the fight scene, Jean- Louis basically throws Alex out. Alfa chases them, offers to go with Alex. He refuses, tells her it's never too late, and takes off, catching a ride to somewhere with Alfa's old boss. Rather than staying in the old incestuous tangle, he cuts Alfa free to make a normal life for herself. We're never told where Jean-Louis went or why.

The last scene is an echo of the opening sequence, with Jeanne at the prow of the boat, wearing her husband's jacket, looking forward to new horizons.