At first sight Belgian director-screenwriter Joachim Lafosse’s French film, Six Days in Spring, might seem like pivoting on a trifle but gains in depth as the narrative coasts along. A ‘slice of holiday’ film that ends up holding a mirror to life itself, its many inequities, injustices and incongruities.
Eye Haidara plays Sana, the single mother of a pair of pre-teen twins, who, despite the financial hurdles, is intent on taking them on Easter holidays to her boyfriend (and the kids’ former football coach) Jules’ (Jules Waring) family home. As his sister’s unexpected arrival rules that out, he offers to book them a room in an expensive hotel. Unable to find cheaper accommodation and unwilling to have him splurge needlessly, the proud Sana decides to head for St Tropez to secretly lodge themselves in her former in-laws’ unoccupied villa.
They live undercover, refrain from using electricity and water lest the family finds out and hang out in off the grid beaches where they don’t stand out and get recognized. A holiday that becomes all about being in hiding than out there. But things don’t go as planned. The boys’ impulsive dip in the neighbour’s pool has the property caretaker Luc (Damien Bonnard) get suspicious. He threatens to call the cops unless they pay him 500 euros for his silence. Another acquaintance Josiane (Emmanuelle Devos) also gets overly nosy. Meanwhile, Sana’s ex-husband demands he be kept informed about where his kids were going for their holiday. So, will their cover eventually get blown amid the many complications?
The France-Luxembourg-Belgium co-production won the Silver Shell award for best director for Lafosse at the recently concluded San Sebastian Film Festival. He also shared the jury prize for the best screenplay for the film with Chloe Duponchelle and Paul Ismael.
Lafosse channels his own childhood memory, of one such unusual week he had spent covertly with his mother and twin at his grandparents' holiday home, into a subtle piece of filmmaking. Six Days in Spring doesn’t shout or scream its heart out: it whispers to put its point across, at times way too softly.
There is a languidness alongside a sense of purpose to the narrative. Lafosse finds lyricism and tenderness and hope and optimism in the strained situation. His ally in the enterprise is Jean-François Hensgens’ tuneful cinematography. The camera glides mellifluously on the actors’ faces often framing them evocatively and intimately in odd angles. Zooming in on a touch of hands, at times says a lot more than words.
At the fulcrum is Eye Haidara who plays Sana with a great sense of self-possession and pride, rebelliousness and compassion. Her equation with the sons Raphael and Thomas, played by real life brothers Leonis and Teodor Pinero Muller, is heartfelt.
It's a holiday that should have ideally been about rest and recreation for them but makes the brothers grow up and mature in unanticipated ways. They realize the finality of their parents’ separation and its implication for the mother. It’s about understanding the class divides, the wide chasm between the haves and have-nots, the privileged father and the disadvantaged, working-class mother. It also brings out the assertiveness in Sana as she states that the kids are not trespassers but have the right to be in their grandparents’ villa.
The plot is built on such paradoxes and contrasts and driven by emotional contradictions. Moments of unalloyed fun and mirth break the overwhelming tension, fear and anxiety as the four of them imitate and make fun of Josiane. Sometimes a nice swim in the calm waters of the sunny sea even in the fancy French Riviera is all you need to find inner liberation. Holidays may happen, or not, but life must carry on spiritedly.