Life is a Long Quiet River

Etienne Chatiliez’s hilarious satire of bourgeois morals tells the story of two families – the Catholic, middle-class, respectable but slightly smug Quesnoys and the poor, uneducated and filthy Groseilles. They have nothing in common until the revelation that an unscrupulous nurse swapped their newborn children years previously. Horrified, the Quesnoys take in their lost son Momo, although the Groseilles are less bothered about reclaiming their daughter Bernadette. But the Quesnoys find that Momo’s old habits die hard and the youngster sets in motion a wickedly comic chain of anarchic events that turn their ordered lives upside down.