Cabourg 2026 – day 2: Maspalomas, Eva Huault and Fuel oil in the arteries
Every day, a look back at the highlights of the 2026 edition of the romantic film festival.
Film of the day: Maspalomas by Aitor Arregi and José Mari Goenaga
Upon retirement, Vicente chose to settle in Maspamolas, a small town in the Canary Islands known as a cruising spot popular with the homosexual community. With a desire to make up for lost time. These long years when this father was unable to come to terms with being gay before cutting ties with his family and in particular his daughter whom he then stopped seeing. At 76, his body continues to exult. Until the day when the carefree attitude suddenly comes to an end after a stroke during… a threesome with her partner and a passing lover. Diminished, Vicente then finds himself placed by his daughter in a rest home from which he will then have only one obsession: to escape. Starting in a very raw way in a raw atmosphere that Alain Guiraudie would not deny, Maspalomas then turns into an intimate melodrama. The Arregi-Goenaga duo shines as much in filming exultant bodies – something extremely rare when it comes to the sexuality of the elderly – as well as the harsh face-to-face encounters between a father and a daughter who has never recovered from her abandonment of home and reproaches him for devastating selfishness. A film as raw as it is delicate which tells of the still poorly extinguished fires of prejudices and taboos continuing to surround homosexuality
In theaters June 24
Actress of the day: Eva Huault in Shana
Eva Huault met Lila Pinell for the first time… at 8 years old when the director came to film a documentary in the summer camp where she was then. A chance encounter therefore but decisive since ten years later, Lila Pinell contacted her again via social networks while she was working as a waitress in a tobacco bar in 93 to offer her to star in her medium-length film King David. This is where the character of Shana is created, which we find in the first feature by the filmmaker who even gave her her name. Between this medium and this long, Eva Huault chose to quit her job to try her luck as an actress. A more than judicious inspiration as she impresses in this role of a young woman coping as best she can with the struggles of everyday life, between major financial worries and a toxic relationship with her boyfriend who has just been released from prison. With this ability to be as comfortable in calm and poignant moments as in those based on his thunderous nature. The pleasure taken in the discovery of Shana owes him a lot.
The revelation: Pierre Le Gall for Fuel oil in the arteries
Etienne is a truck driver dedicated to his profession. So dedicated that he sacrificed his entire emotional life, limited to overnight meetings with anonymous people in the parking lots where he takes his breaks. Until the day when an encounter makes his heart beat a little harder than the others and allows him to glimpse another possible life, that of Bartosz, a Polish truck driver whom he will now try to find as often as possible despite their incompatible schedules. For his first feature film, Pierre Le Gall decided to talk about love. And he does it with great finesse symbolized by the writing of characters and situations which each time succeeds in thwarting everything he believes he has anticipated with certainty. The art of playing with archetypes but also a real sense of casting as well as the duo formed by Alexis Manenti (in his most important role since The Mohican) and Julian Swiezewski bursts into the screen.
In theaters December 2
