Vacances

synopsis

Director Victoria Hely-Hutchinson offers us a glimpse into a hermetically sealed, highly privileged, yet deeply toxic microcosm in her family portrait Vacances. This time-lapse film, shot over a period of ten years, follows members of several generations of a wealthy aristocratic family with Austro-Hungarian roots. The entire film is set in a Provençal villa, whose social heart is the swimming pool, around which the women gather to exchange various observations and, surreptitiously, gossip. The centre of the family is the aging matriarch, who likes to talk about her extravagant, promiscuous life, but at the same time commands all the attention and authority of those around her. However, her influence gradually weakens with each passing generation. The director herself is a member of the family being filmed and captures the dynamics of their relationships with a directness that some of her relatives describe on camera as cruel.

“You would like to get all the sort of the crunchy wickedness out of people. And then you’re like a little elf going, ‘Hahahaa! Look what I have. I’ve got the money to splurge.’ And I think to myself, ‘Yeah, but you’re pretty wicked.’”

biography

Victoria Hely-Hutchinson (b. 1984) is a British artist. In addition to film directing, she is also a photographer and has written an autobiographical book entitled I Left My Grandmother’s House. The film Vacances follows on from her 2016 short film of the same name.

film details

director:	Victoria Hely-Hutchinson
producer:	Catherine Rehwinkel
photography:	Victoria Hely-Hutchinson
editing:	Brad Turner
sound design:	Murray Trider
executive producer:	Brad Turner, Andrew Neel

contact

Catherine Rehwinkel/SeeThink Films
catherine@seethink.com