Sandcastle
By a tidal pool near a small beach on France’s Mediterranean coast, a North African–looking man glimpses a young woman stripping to swim. Later, but still early in the morning, three families intent on sunbathing and picnicking encounter the man, then find the girl’s corpse in the pool. One paterfamilias, a racist, xenophobic physician, angrily accuses the North African of murder and calls the cops. While awaiting the police, the doctor’s mother dies. The young children of two of the families start growing, the little ones right out of their swimsuits and the preteens into puberty. The adults are changing, too. Attempts to leave the area prove futile, and further calls don’t go through. At the rate they’re aging, they’ll all be dead by tomorrow morning. Peeters’ accomplished European realist comics style and Lévy’s utterly natural dialogue suit to a tee this maximally eerie, unsettlingly plein air exercise that Kafkaesquely defies all explanation. --Ray Olson