By Lawrence Ferber

Filmmakers and life partners Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau discuss their splashy new film Cote d'Azur.

They say a seaside vacation can be liberating -- and for a French family in the new film Cote d'Azur, that's putting it lightly! Filmmaking and life partners Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have dreamt up a deliriously funny comedy about a family getaway that turns into a hormone-fueled omnisexual romp.

Parents Marc (Gilbert Melki) and Beatrix (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and their teenage children Laura (Sabrina Seyvecou) and Charly (Romain Torres) shack up in a rustic house on the Mediterranean's Cote d'Azur. The seaside air and violets (shellfish) seem to have a hormonal effect: the shower becomes a masturbation chamber, while Charly and his equally adorable pal -- or could it be boyfriend? -- Martin (Edouard Collin) seem to be up to something. When not pondering her son's sexuality, Beatrix sneaks out for her own lusty rendezvous with a secret lover, Mathieu (Jacques Bonnaffe). And as for poor Marc? Well, he's got a naughty queer secret of his own. Add a hunky gay plumber (Jean-Marc Barr), a cruising trail, and lots of aphrodisiac-loaded mollusks and you've got a summer to remember.

Partners for almost a decade, Ducastel and Martineau first collaborated in 1998 on the Umbrellas of Cherbourg-inspired musical, Jeanne and The Perfect Guy. Their award-winning 2000 feature, Adventures of Felix, involved a young HIV-positive Arab on a quest to find his father, while 2002's faux video diary, My Life On Ice, imagined a gay teen ice skater coming out. Cote d'Azur is probably the couple's most commercial, accessible work yet, while still harkening back to their long running themes of chosen families and complicated romances, AIDS-awareness, and love of musicals. To discuss Cote d'Azur, gay teens, and whether family outings will ever be the same again, I chatted with the amicable duo.

What was the inspiration behind Cote d'Azur?

Olivier Ducastel: We really wanted to do a comedy. It's not very original, but when you have a film that is not as successful as you expect, which was the case of My Life on Ice, you stick with your producer who says, "Maybe you should do something more commercial." So we thought about it and how, when Felix was in the theaters, people reacted to the funny things it was touching for us. It crosses the borders. So we begin to think about doing a comedy. On the other side, come up with something that isn't really a subject for a comedy. I told Jacques maybe we can do something about a father and a child and he's gay, but never told anybody. And Jacques began to write. We also wanted to continue our teenager stories, with the relationship between a gay and straight teenager.

There's always a cute teen boy or two in your films.

Jacques Martineau: Yes. But there are a lot of very cute teenagers everywhere in the world.

How did you find Romain and Edouard?

J: Cruising.

O: No, we did a very normal casting process. Romain was very afraid we would ask him to cut his [long, frizzy] hair. We said, "Oh no, it's OK. We like that very much." [Romain] is really heterosexual.

J: And he's very lazy. A slow guy. A little bit too much [of a pot smoker]. For the part of Martin we put up ads in gay papers for the part because we felt it would be great to have an actual young gay guy. Especially because young actors are not acting so much. They are real.

O: We got responses from people who (had) never played in anything. They were very ashamed in front of the camera. They said they didn't expect to have the part, they just wanted to see how it's organized or to meet us.

What sort of living situation did the actors and crew experience while making the film? And was there a communal shower?

J: Most of the crew and actors lived in a hotel. Not a very good one, it was the only one there, and they all had their own bathroom.

O: Sorry! Truth is not as sexy as fiction.

I loved the mother character, Beatrix -- she's extremely open-minded, totally content with the idea her son is gay. Is this a typical modern French woman?

J: I don't think so.

O: When we wrote the script, the first people who read the script had a little problem with the character, because they told us she's too tolerant. That's why Beatrix explains you can't be too tolerant. We also chose to make her character Dutch because for French the Dutch are tolerant.

J: The Dutch are very special.

O: They are very comfortable with their bodies and can be naked outdoors, which is not the case with French women. We have to consider all Europeans' particularities.

The film has a couple of musical numbers, including the big ensemble climax. Did you always plan to end it that way?

J: Not at the beginning. Olivier had the idea of an epilogue, and when we saw [Takeshi Kitano's] Zatoichi, there is an incredible musical scene at the end so we thought OK, maybe we can do that. We're not saying our ending is on the same level. Obviously Kitano had a lot of time and money to do that! But this way everybody will go out of the theater singing and dancing.

Was the cruising area on the beach a real cruising area? And did you interrupt any action while shooting?

O: No. The cruising area, the real one, is a little bit more rough in appearance because it's close to a railway track.

J: It was technically difficult to go there and the place we shot is very far away. More than three kilometers walking.

Did you send the actors there to "study?"

J: No. I can't imagine!

Cote d'Azur is ultimately an idealistic film, wherein a new utopian family of spouses, children, and everybody's lovers can exist in seaside harmony. Do you know many families like this?

O: We know parents who go on vacation, for example, with their new boyfriend and the kids. People do that in France. If you have kids from the first relationship and have a new relationship, if you want to go on vacation together you have to be comfy with your ex. On the contrary, it's very difficult for the children. They have to choose which parent they want to go with on vacation.

J: We don't know so many families. That's maybe why we do an idealistic movie. We have a very small family. I have a brother and sister but it's not exactly a family. Very bizarre. Not very tight.

Do you think families will want to go on vacations more or less after seeing the film?

O: It could change and the French will all move to the beach.

J: Even better, maybe we should do a survey about violets consumption this summer.