Actor Matthieu Rozé makes a feature film debut as director with a playful and laid-back vacation drama based on Marguerite Duras’s “The Little Horses of Tarquinia.” As is their wont, two French couples and their single friend go on vacation in a claustrophobic, Mediterranean hole-in-the-wall. When they aren’t languidly bickering, they spend their time planning dinner, while the sun scorches and the ice chinks in the uncountable Campari drinks. Until the familiar vacation tedium is broken by the arrival of a mysterious, attractive stranger on a fast boat. Azuro is a pleasing portrayal of long-term relationships, with an agile dialogue and sublimely amusing characters, who are aggravating, complicated, and self-absorbed – and react and act accordingly. All while they ignore that a fire up in the mountains draws nearer. In the delightful star cast we see among others a wonderful Florence Loiret-Caille (The Bureau) as the unbridled friend Margaux.
