Camping du Lac (Yannick Dupont)

What is it?

Camping du Lac is the feature film debut of French director Éléonore Saintagnan. IMDb needs to help us with the plot: “After Éléonore’s automobile breaks down, she rents a bungalow on a campsite with a view of the lake, in which, it is said, a mythical beast resides. She moves from one mobile home to another, allowing fantasy to encroach on her space.“

Sadly, I’ve not been able to see the film at this point. It has had very limited distribution – mostly festival screenings in 2023 plus a French run in 2024. But as with IMDb above, festival blurbs come to our aid. Nepheli Gambade, for example, describes the film thusly on the Viennale page: “Working mainly with non-actors and using real locations, Saintagnan transforms reality into a playground of fantasy and storytelling, where temporalities and narratives both personal and collective intertwine. With tenderness, zany humor and a penchant for the absurd, Camping du Lac drinks in the magic of things— including a shimmering folk musician—while casting a concerned eye on capitalist greed and our relationship to nature.”

The music is composed by Belgian percussionist Yannick Dupont, but information on him is also scarce. He seems to have released a number of studio albums (sometimes with a jazzy slant) as well as a handful of film scores. As you’ve already gathered by now – all of this is very much a hidden gem.

How is it?

I discovered Camping du Lac while preparing my top 10 of 2024, and it totally blew me away. So much so that it became my second favourite score of last year, only superseded by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ Challengers. Not bad for a soundtrack album that is only 21 minutes long (much too short!), and for a film I’ve never seen.

The instant attraction is rooted, I think, in two things: One, the score’s delightful ode to the great Wendy Carlos, especially her electronic reworkings of classical music on the seminal album Switched-On Bach from 1968, and her subsequent film work on things like A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. This is displayed in infectiously computerized tracks such as «Fugue Sofia», «Dîner des rois» «Feu d’artifice» or «Poisson se meurt» – conceptualized with perfectly pinched precision.

And two, those loungey, dreamy, quasi-jazzy soundscapes that defined 60s exotica and Euro cinema – much like the work of Forever Pavot, who we’ve championed several times on this site (Babysitter, Simple comme Sylvain). Listen, for example, to the delightful chime sounds of «La révélation» or the watery, ornamented style of «Songe d’une nuit d’été» – complete with natural sounds of the night. Or the laidback grooves of «La révélation Hamilton» and «L’été marshmallow».

I can easily see these two elements playing off of one another in the film – the zany elements of the story mirrored in the irony of the faux-classical compositions, and the dream-like absurdity in the lounge. But as it happens, it also works perfectly as a concept album on its own. A gorgeous, humourous, retro, instantly enjoyable concept album about existential musings. I wish it were twice as long.