Very married with children, Beatrix has a secret lover waiting in the flowerpot, Mathieu. She also has Charly, her very pretty son with some feminine qualities. Charly has a hot best friend named Martin, who peculiarly is not sharing a bedroom in the rambling estate with his friend. Beatrix also has Marc, her nice but reserved husband, who may have more than his son’s welfare on his mind as he takes furtive glances at the boys on the beach.

Aiming for a blend of the sensibilities of Eric Rohmer and Jacques Demy, this well intended joint effort by co-director/writers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Marineau misses the mark. It has neither the intelligence of Rohmer nor the playfulness of Demy and is further damaged by the oddly overpowering screen persona of Beatrix (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi).

While 40ish women with teenage children needn’t wear sensible shoes and modest resort wear, Tedeschi’s sexy mother, given an unwarranted amount of time and attention by the camera, belongs to that set of matrons referred to as seductive mothers. This window dressing is an unnecessary and puzzling distraction and does little to illuminate the plot. Meanwhile Gilbert Melki as husband and father Marc seems a bit pained by everything going on around him.

Evidently the idea was to make light of this menagerie of merging family relations, but the result is a somewhat silly, somewhat sordid mix. What works best is the ambiguity and angst of Martin’s longing for Charly and Marc’s for old flame Didier. The pretty countryside and seaside locales are wasted in favor of the affected performance by Tedeschi. All the little intrigues are punctuated by many doors being slammed shut or being left inappropriately ajar.

Presumably an effort to have some fun while further bridging the gap between keeping secrets and being openly comfortable with one’s sexual path, the film has the false feel of a weak sitcom. Complex issues are all tidied up amicably at the conclusion and a reengineered extended family emerges, neither very amusing nor very believable.

Besides Teseschi and Melki, the able cast includes several veterans of French cinema including Jacaues Bonnaffe, Jean-Marc Barr and relative newcomers Edouard Collin and Romain Torres. Unfortunately, they needed a better ensemble-focused screenplay to work with, which might have generated more chemistry.