Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, St-Marc-Sur-Mere

We found St Marc sur Mere with our friends Louise and Baz this Summer. Its about 45 mins from where we live and has a beautiful white sandy beach, with a lovely cafe on the sand and if you ever come and visit us we'll take you there. Its also the place where the adventures of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday films were filmed and there is a statue of Monsieur Hulot overlooking 'le plage' in remembrance.

I am sure that you will have seen some of the movies, but if you haven't they are well worth watching - very funny.

French Film Club - Times Online
Jacques Tati’s film M Hulot’s Holiday is over fifty years old, but its setting is still intact. Sarah Turner pays homage with her bucket and spade

Traditionally, French films ignore the British (and we’re happy to do the same) but St-Marc-sur-Mer, at the point where Brittany meets the Loire, is the site of cinema’s greatest entente cordiale. In 1952, the actor/writer/director Jacques Tati arrived at this seaside village, installing himself at the Hotel de la Plage.

The film he made there – Les Vacances de M Hulot, or, as English-speakers have come to know it, M Hulot’s Holiday, became an instant classic on both sides of the Channel. Often seen as a tribute to Charlie Chaplin, it has the greatest collection of sight gags ever caught on celluloid: a thousand small episodes, funny, poignant and gentle. Rowan Atkinson has described seeing it as "the defining moment of my life" (and went on to create Hulot-esque Mr Bean).

Tati used a mixture of actors, locals and holidaymakers in his film, rehearsing them for hours to get the look of a home movie. With no narrative and precious little dialogue, the story of a middle-aged man going on holiday (and wreaking havoc in the process) is an affectionate snapshot of two nations dipping their toes - metaphorically and literally - in the enticing waters of tourism.

Behind Hulot’s struggles with deckchairs (doomed) and games of tennis (disastrous), is a portrayal of the French middle class discovering the joys of the holiday for the first time, from sunbathing, group photographs and interacting with other guests to - above all - the joy of a day spent relaxing on a beach.

Among the guests with which Tati peoples his hotel is a group of doughty British holiday makers, wanting to assimilate, yet unmistakably un-French; pioneering post-war travellers to a land of baguettes, bidets and bolsters. In 1952, rationing was still in force in Britain and Elizabeth David was unknown to all but an elite.

St-Marc-sur-Mer, however, has never been elite: it has none of the aspirational gleam of the Cote d'Azur and is a bracing sort of place with pine forests, solid Edwardian houses, municipal floral displays, windswept beaches with rock pools and coast walks - Cornwall-sur-mer, if you like; unpretentious and family-friendly.

Today, at the Hotel de la Plage, you will look in vain for the dining room’s squeaking door (the interiors were all created on a set) and a poster and a few film stills are all that signify its place in cinematic history.

It prefers to get on with the business of being a three-star French hotel, which means idiosyncratic furnishings (ceramic lions in the reception) and the quintessentially French habit of serving great food in a restaurant utterly lacking in atmosphere.

The inner truth of Tati’s vision holds strong, though. A British family hesitantly orders in French, plumping for canard and fruits de mer before – in a scene straight from the film – settling down to a game of cards.

Carl and Trish from Birmingham are drinking rosé in the bar. Before they found St-Marc-sur-Mer on an excursion from St-Lazare last year, they didn’t really know about Tati, but recognise a stellar French seaside village when they see one.

In the intervening 50 years, St-Marc-sur-Mer has changed surprisingly little. The beach huts may have gone and these days there's a statue of Tati as M Hulot - in all his gangly glory - overlooking the beach (which is named Plage du M Hulot in his honour) and the bakery sells the M Hulot baguette.

But - by and large – people come here to have a holiday, unconsciously acting out the background to the film. They arrive by car, eat in the restaurants, chat to their fellow guests and experience a gentler, sepia-tinted way of life.

During the day, they head for the beach, buckets and spades in hand. Children clamber on the rocks, the shops still sell shrimping nets, there are no nightclubs, just a few bars selling pastis. Middle-aged men still sit in deckchairs wearing Hulot-style hats, oblivious to everyone else. Quite a few of them are carrying Waitrose shopping bags and are unmistakably British.

The entente cordiale has paid dividends. We've helped do away with bolsters - pillows are now standard in French hotels. In return, we've made great strides in understanding the thinking behind bidets. But there are still enough contrasts to make you feel you can reach out and touch Tati’s France in St-Marc-sur-Mer.