‘I’ve come to piss you off’: Deceased Artiste Bertrand Blier (Part 2 of two)

"My name is Bertie Blye.

"No, I’ve never stolen a car, or gone to prison, or abused Isabelle Huppert on the side of a road. 

"And yet I am the immortal author of Les Valseuses.

"I was born March 4, 1939, a good year, at Boulogne-Billancourt.

"My father was a good actor.

"Yes, he had an influence over me. As much as Boris Vian, James Cain, and Thelonious Monk.

"I am an old young director full of promise (Hitler, connais pas!).

"Sadly, I didn’t keep that promise (Calmos).

"And then, thanks to a group of friends and the flip of a wrist, I managed to pull myself together (Buffet Froid).

"You see how I can look at my work in a lucid way.

"If you ask me who are the best moviegoers in the world, I will tell you the Americans, because of a pretty little statue that sits in my library and that I caress once a day with a trembling hand. (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs)

"As to why my hand is trembling, I will let you guess. Sometimes it’s emotion.

"I am also the director of a film titled Beau-Père, the star of which has given us the slip. 

"The cinema is much more important than politics, believe me.” [Self-written bio, found on p. 160 in Blier, Pensées et répliques]

I ended the first part of this piece with a discussion of Too Beautiful for You (1989), which was a turning point in Blier’s work, as it saw him departing from the world he had depicted from the mid-Seventies on, in which he limned (and made fun of) sexist men and numb women, as well as curious ciphers who inhabited an absurdist universe. 

But just because his female characters became three-dimensional and one could feel genuine sympathy for them didn’t mean that Blier was abandoning his characteristic Theatre of the Absurd-ish situations and bizarre juxtapositions. He proved that brilliantly in the trio of films he made with actress Anouk Grinberg, who was his companion for most of the Nineties and the muse for his first films devoted to female protagonists.

Ad for the English translation of the novel
Going Places.

First, a word about his approach to filmmaking. One of the reasons I did 14 episodes about his films on the Funhouse TV show from the fall of 2021 to the spring of 2022 is that his work adhered to both the “high” and “low” sides of the material I cover. At first glance his films were sexual and appealed to the vulgar side of French farce; once one watches more than a few minutes of any of his films, though, it’s evident that a master storyteller was at work, who wanted to depict characters in certain situations, but never offered the easy (idiotic) answers you’d find in a simple sex farce.

He stated his goal in a 1988 quote: “From the beginning I try to identify strategies that will let me take the viewer by surprise. I’m particularly fond of using cliches and classic dramatic forms as my starting point. Then I completely reverse them. It upsets the emotional balance, shatters the cocoon of intellectual comfort in which spectators have hoped to bury themselves.” [1988 quote, cited in Harris, p. 20]

Blier and his wife,
actress Farida Rahouadj

Thus, the illogical universe that his characters inhabit may seem to indicate that the film is going out of control, but that universe is actually a careful construct through which Blier is up-ending any number of dramatic cliches. And there are no better examples of this than the first two films he made with Grinberg.

Sadly, though, U.S. distribution of foreign films got weaker in the Eighties and by the Nineties it reached new lows. Thus, of the eight films I about to discuss here — of which at least four are classic Blier, up there with his Seventies/Eighties best — only one (!) had U.S. theatrical distribution and two had DVD releases (with one other being released only on VHS).

Thus, some of Blier’s best work has never been seen by American cinephiles. And thus the image of him as a “misogynist” filmmaker was made even greater, as very few American viewers have seen the mature Blier. (His age when making these last eight films spans from 52 to 80!)

One of the great examples of this mature approach was his first female-centric film, Merci La Vie (1991). He said about the picture and its follow-up Un deux trois soleil, “I’ve begun my second career. I’ve invested more of myself in these last two films.” [1993 quote, cited in Harris, p. 130]

Merci is one of Blier’s greatest achievements, in that it does open up a new period in his work while also visually “quoting” his earlier works. It also is one of his most extreme experiments with temporal and spatial displacement, as we jump backwards and forwards in time and in and out of fiction. These “jumps” are indicated to the viewer via a series of differently colored sequences, as the film is in color, b&w, and monochrome depending on the environment or time period that we’re in. 

This sounds like it could be quite confusing, but Blier makes it easier to follow by giving us two lead characters who become the female equivalents of the two antiheroes in Les Valseuses (1974). In that case both of the men were charming but dumb; here the women are smarter, as Joëlle is a troublemaker (Anouk Grinberg) and the other, Camille (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is a younger student who is the more logical and less impetuous of the two. We follow them from adventure to adventure and eventually get to know them quite well.

The film’s time periods come about as a result of Camille studying for her finals about the subject of WWII and the fact that a film is being made about WWII that the two women wander into (and Joëlle becomes the star of). But is it really a film, or is it actually a different life for Joëlle, who apparently underwent a medical experiment without her knowledge: she was given a venereal disease by a crafty doctor (Depardieu) who wants to see its effects on the local male population. 

Again, when recounted in print, the plot doesn’t make much sense, but Blier was indeed a master of absurdism and so there is an inherent logic to the illogic we see. What is going on is that Blier is not only showing his two female leads bonding and protecting each other from harm; he is also making a subtle and stinging commentary on the then-current AIDS crisis, likening it to the Holocaust.

Blier addressed the changes in time and space by noting that Merci was “a channel-hopper’s film. That’s what it’s about. You zap, and suddenly it’s in black and white, it’s a war film…. Kids are great at it, they can even put on a cassette and call someone at the same time. It’s like gymnastics for viewers….” [1991 quote, cited in Harris on pp. 134-35.]

The thing that makes the film so special, though, is not the flow of events the women move though, but the fact that they are emotionally appealing characters. Camille cares much about her father (as Charlotte did with Serge Gainsbourg in real life) and Joëlle confesses her fear of dying young from the disease she’s been poisoned with. Merci is in fact such a special creation because of this counterpoint between an utterly absurd sequence of events and two deeply felt (and extremely well acted) lead characters.

The film is compelling from its opening image: Joëlle being smacked and left behind on a road in a wedding gown by her boyfriend, who drives away. Camille finds her and puts her in a shopping cart (a blatant reference to the opening of Les Valseuses) and tries to protect her throughout the rest of the film. (This is reinforced by the women’s height differential — Camille is taller and also has more common sense than Joëlle, so she comes off as an “older sister,” despite being years younger.)

The self-referential aspect seen in earlier Blier films reaches full flower here. The characters make references to the soundtrack music and the fact that they are in flashbacks. One particularly bizarre moment in the WWII plot finds Camille saying she might die, and her father (played as a younger man by Michel Blanc) notes that she can’t die, she hasn’t been born yet.

Then, in the weirdest twist, Depardieu’s doctor character urges the father to use a condom if he has sex with Joëlle. To which the father responds with a shout (after the characters have been nearly bombed by the Germans), “What period are we in, anyway? If there’s AIDS, there’s no Boches [Germans]. If there’s Boches, there’s no AIDS, and we can screw!”

Thus, Merci is not just a transitional work by Blier but an exceptionally weird and funny comedy with an undertone of longing for the past and sadness for the victims of both 20th-century nightmares. Camille’s love of her dad eventually comes to mirror Bertrand’s feelings for his father Bernard (who died shortly before he made the film); her father (as an old man, played by Jean Carmet) gives her a speech about being typecast in the acting profession and wishing he had been a “great actor.” “The plot never revolves around me… the best I can hope for now is to die playing a small part.” Clearly, this speech was built out of things that Bernard Blier said to his son as he got older.

Hopefully, someday Merci will get the cult it so richly deserves. It was hated by the critics in France, but it never even received U.S. theatrical distribution and was never released on any home-entertainment format. 

The next film continued Blier’s maturation as a filmmaker. Un deux trois soleil (aka One, two, three, freeze, 1993) received no distribution but thankfully did have a DVD release for a short time. At points he identified the film as “the most personal” of all his works. This is a fascinating statement, given that the film presents the life of a young woman, as we witness her moving through moments of her childhood, teenage years, and adulthood all in the same spaces (a housing project in Marseilles). 

As in Merci, Anouk Grinberg gives a terrific performance here, incarnating the heroine at different ages, with the jumps in time occurring suddenly. Her character is wistful, as she struggles with her overbearing mother (Myriam Boyer, Serie noire), memories of a boyfriend (Olivier Martinez) who died as a teenager, and pleading with her alcoholic father (Marcello Mastroianni) to give up booze. 

The above might indicate that the film is a melodrama; it is not. There are many great comedic moments, all of them utterly absurd, and a few of the plot threads weave in an element that was new to Blier’s work, namely magical realism. Her boyfriend is labelled as dead from the first, but during the events of the film her parents both die and reappear to her, driving her as nuts in their post-death incarnations as they did in life.

Blier spoke about the new approach seen in this film: “After a dozen years, I have the impression of being able to make dense and develop themes in a very personal way, freed from the classic structure of the first films.” [Predal, jeune cinema] 

In addition to the comedy there are genuinely moving moments, many of which have to do with the father character. Blier was clearly still haunted by his father’s death, and so he created an Italian father to stand in for his French father, who was an Italo-phile. Mastroianni is absolutely perfect in the role (again showing that, as an actor, he got better and better throughout his career), as his character is to be seen as both a drunken sot (who keeps wandering into the wrong apartments in the housing complex, mistaking Black families for his own) and a man who longs terribly to go back to Italy. 

One of the images that sums up the film best concerns the father: He is pranked by two teens from the apartment complex who keep appearing in his path carrying around a door for him to go through, with his correct apartment number on it. The final use of this door is absolutely moving and truly is one of the most unabashedly and beautifully sentimental moments in Blier’s cinema.

The film never was distributed in the U.S. (It did play at MoMA, where I saw Blier and Grinberg do an introduction.) Thus, there was no recognition in America of Blier’s stepping away from the more controversial “vulgar” themes found in some of his Seventies and Eighties work. What was noted by foreign critics who did see the film, though, was that Blier was finally including Black characters in his film and in Soleil is openly commenting on the manner in which poor families are huddled together in housing projects. (Though he does show the family units to be quite solid and nurturing — something Grinberg’s character has never had, thus a Black woman who becomes her surrogate mother.)

The critics clearly had misinterpreted Blier’s messages about society — his depictions of sexist characters found him branded Right-wing, but he was personally Left-leaning. When asked about it, he said,“... I believe that my films — me, perhaps not, but them, yes — are left-wing. Apart from Too Beautiful for You, where they are gentrified, all my heroes are from the wrong side of the street: thugs, lost people….” [Murat, Telerama]

Like Merci, Soleil deserves an audience. One can only hope that a programmer (or perhaps a prone-to-homages filmmaker like Wes Anderson) will move it out of the shadows and it will finally be seen as one of Blier’s best, most layered works. 

Blier’s last film starring Anouk Grinberg was Mon Homme (aka My Man, 1996). This film did get a distribution deal in the U.S. and appeared on VHS (via Artificial Eye and New Yorker). It is an excellent comedy but isn’t as groundbreaking as its predecessors. 

Here we find Grinberg playing a hooker who takes her work seriously (with one of her johns being played by New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Leaud!) and who decides to take a big, bizarre step when she takes pity on a homeless man (Gérard Lanvin) and then makes him her pimp. He stays in that role, collecting her money, but then cheats on her with a woman (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) who doesn’t want to be a hooker, so he keeps seeing her (and spending money on her) as a mistress. 

Blier had an interesting reaction to Mon Homme in later years. He said, “Mon Homme, this is my hardest film. The hardest. I don't claim it too much. There are times when we go too far... and there, I went there! I don't claim all my films, you know. Not Calmos, nor Mon Homme, nor My Friend's Girl. But I like Merci la vie and Un deux trois soleil….” [Murat, Telerama]

The film may have been a difficult one for Blier in terms of his scripting or perhaps his relationship with his star (this was their last film together). But it is a perfectly entertaining dark comedy that has some sexy moments and continues Blier’s run of films with complex female characters.

And it does boast one of the most interesting juxtapositions of music in any modern film. On its soundtrack can be heard the emotional, religious compositions of Henryk Gorecki and the sensual, earthy songs of Mr. Barry White. 

With the turning of the century Blier’s films disappeared from America’s movie screens entirely (although one of the films did get a brief DVD release; see below). The first movie in the run of five movies that went under the radar over here was Les Acteurs (aka Actors, 2000). The film circulated among English-speaking collectors as a bootleg from a subtitled version that aired on the SBS Channel in Australia.

Acteurs is Blier returning whole-heartedly to Theater of the Absurd comedy, with a who’s who of French actors “of a certain age” musing about their lives and careers, and the fact that they’re getting fewer roles as they grow older. We follow an initial group of them (André Dussollier, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jacques Villeret) who find themselves in a restaurant, unsure of their lines. The initial group then wanders (in classic Blier style) through Paris, meeting different colleagues as they move on. 

The line-up of familiar faces is incredible, with Blier focusing most attention on the character people and a few superstars showing up in different guises: Depardieu crashes his motorcycle into a billboard near the group; Belmondo is a homeless version of himself (who gets a great death scene as jazz appears on the soundtrack); and Delon is shooting some kind of thriller (and says about himself “I’m a silent sort of guy, with a silent sort of face...”), but then points out the empty chairs on set (“you should always have a chair for a friend who may drop in, a chair with his name...”) emblazoned with the names of two great dead French stars (Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura). He then names others who need chairs (Bourvil, Louis de Funes, Simone Signoret, and Yves Montand).

One of the more surprising scenes for fans of French film who may not have been following the private lives of the stars involves Jean-Claude Brialy, a great star of the Sixties and Seventies. Brialy had come out as gay in his later life and allowed Blier to write a humorous scene related to this fact — but in the scene Brialy retains his dignity and reminds the other actor about Brialy’s place in cinema as a star in the films of the French New Wave.

Blier did also include two women in the parade of performers: Josiane Balasko (who claims to be André Dussollier) and Maria Schneider, whom he gifted with a nice monologue. At its end, she says, “I’m Maria Schneider. This scene has been good for me.” 

Blier and only *some* of his actor friends.

He referred to his cast in an interview as “an entire orchestra” and talked about how he conceived of the film (and its eventual failure at the box office): “...there, it was the public who did not want to get involved in the game, in this series of jokes and pleasantries in which the actors participated cheerfully. 

“I wrote with the phone next to me, and as soon as I came up with a scene for an actor, I called him. Each time, I gave that actor the names of those who had already accepted before him, and in that fashion I finally got everyone, with a snowball effect. The problem is that there should have been others, but the budget suffered drastic cuts, which forced me to reduce my ambitions, and I had to give up scenes involving younger actors. But the scenario was shot exactly as it was written.” [Predal, jeune cinema]

One watches the film wondering what set it in motion for Blier. That is revealed in the very last scene, in which the actor Claude Brasseur acts out a scene with a gun in a rainstorm. He is interrupted when he receives a cellphone call, which turns out to be from his dead dad, the great French actor Pierre Brasseur (Children of Paradise). Blier is revealed to be the director of the film; he and the crew watch Claude talk to his father. Claude soon turns back to Bertrand, saying his father is “with a pal who’d like to talk to you.” 

Bertrand takes the cellphone and begins a conversation with his father Bernard. He makes small talk and explains the film he’s making is about actors. He then responds to an unheard question, “Of course I think about you. Every day. In fact, as time goes on, I miss you even more.” [cut to credits]

This finale is about as personal as Blier’s art ever got. No more “stand-in” characters for his father, just Bertrand lamenting his death on film, at the end of his own meditation about older actors who are getting fewer lines, less calls with work, and have no idea which way to go with their lives. And, again, I note this is a thoroughly enjoyable and moving work that was never, ever seen by American viewers. 

The next film by Blier is probably my least favorite, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just that the first half or so is directly adapted from a play that Blier wrote, which reportedly ran for two years in Paris. And, surprisingly, given that many of his films contain scenes (or entire portions of the film) that could be called “stagey” (read: two-character scenes in confined environments), Les Côtelettes (aka The cutlets, 2003), which was actually a play, comes off as a more “limited” offering, although the second half in which the film opens up is a lot more engaging.

The plot revolves around two pompous older men (Philippe Noiret and Michel Bouquet) who both fall in love with the same woman — namely the woman (Farida Rahouadj, Blier’s last wife) who works as a maid for one of them. Bouquet visits Noiret at the very beginning and notes he’s there specifically “to piss you off” (a classic Blier line). Soon, the men become embroiled in the triangle, which one can easily see as a kind of allegory for colonialism.

The film moves back to the world of Seventies Blier when the character of “Death,” depicted as an older woman (Catherine Hiegel), appears and says she is going to claim the maid. The two men end up attempting to stave the Grim Reaper off by screwing her in the hospital where their beloved is slowly dying – until there’s a musical number and the whole film goes wildly out of control. (And this time the out-of-control sequence is well-designed and performed, unlike the bizarre end of Calmos in which our antiheroes end up in a rather cheap-looking simulation of a vagina.) 

The “second career” of Blier reached a latter-day high point with the funny and characteristically bizarre How Much Do You Love Me? (2005), which was out briefly on DVD from Strand (with no theatrical release in the U.S. beforehand). The film is a densely plotted farce, which, again, is as good as anything Blier made in the Seventies and Eighties but was barely seen by American viewers.

Its initial premise is that a schnook (Bernard Campan) gets a beautiful hooker (Monica Bellucci) to live with him by convincing her that he is a lottery winner. The schnook is revealed to have a heart condition by his doctor friend (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who warns the hooker that she might kill him with vigorous sex. The hooker eventually disappears, and the schnook learns that she is the wife of a gangster (Depardieu), who offers to let the schnook have her for a certain sum of money (equal to his lottery winnings). That’s when it comes out that our antihero was lying and that he never won the lottery, and complications pile up. 

How Much is a beautifully stylized comedy with urban late-night landscapes, beautiful camera movement, and eye-catching set design. It shows just how vibrant and amusing Blier’s scripting can be and contains two scene-stealing moments, from doctor Darroussin, who delivers a touching monologue about a nurse he one loved, and neighbor Farida Rahouadj, who instructs the schnook and the hooker in how truly great sex should sound.

It also contains one of those memorably un-p.c. lines that made critics who gave only a cursory glance to his films the notion that he was a misogynist. The line in question? “Asses are meant to be touched. This is France!”

The last Blier masterwork is Le bruit des glaçons (aka The Clink of Ice, 2010). It’s not at all subtle but is wonderfully scripted and presents us with an absurdist scenario that is both very funny and quite moving at points. 

In an interview Blier spoke very eloquently about it. He called it “...my purest film. It's probably due to my age, to maturity. And more than the cancer plotline, it was for the love scenes between Anne Alvaro and Jean Dujardin that I shot the film…. When you have an incurable brain tumor, the fulfillment of the life you have left passes by necessity through the arms of a woman. We are looking for the one who will close your eyes, and it is not always the one we expect who does it.” [Murat, Telerama] 

The plot is beautifully fashioned. It concerns an alcoholic author (Jean Dujardin, The Artist and the brilliant, unseen-in-the-U.S. J’Accuse by Polanski) who receives a visit one day from a gentleman (Albert Dupontel) who claims that the author is dying and that he is the author’s cancer. The author’s Russian mistress can’t see his cancer and neither can his devoted maid (Anna Alvaro, Danton).

As the film moves on, the author argues with his cancer (in the classic manner of Blier’s comedy team leads) and eventually falls in love with the only one who truly cares about him, the maid. However, the maid has received a caller as well — a woman (Myriam Boyer) who claims that she is her cancer. She is not as well dressed and articulate as the author’s cancer, but that is because she represents “the cancer of the employed,” not the “cancer of the bosses.”

The film grows in bizarre activity until a scene in which the lives of author and the maid are threatened by crooks who break into the house, and thus comes a surprisingly upbeat ending. At that point we hear the stirring and beautiful rendition of Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” by Nina Simone; other music heard in the film is composed by Ravel, Handel, Schumann, Leonard Cohen, and Felix Leclerc (a terrific song by a singer-songwriter unknown in the U.S.).

Dujardin and Dupontel are great as the lead male characters, but Alvaro truly shines as the maid. She won a Cesar for her performance. 

The Maid (Anna Alvaro) and her "cancer"
(Myriam Boyer).

Glaçons returned to one of Blier’s favorite techniques, direct address to the viewer. He noted that “…in silent cinema, Chaplin did it. And if Chaplin did it, why not me?… In Le bruit des glaçons, it seemed essential to me. All the characters contemplate their death. Except cancer, who doesn't need to...”

And while Glaçons is Blier’s last masterwork, his final film, Convoi exceptionnel (aka Heavy Duty) (2019) is an enjoyable farce that returns to elements contained in his previous films. First of all is a shopping cart: Les Valseuses began with Depardieu in a shopping cart being pushed by Dewaere; in the opening of Merci La Vie Charlotte Gainsbourg pushes Anouk Grinberg in a shopping cart after she finds her unconscious by the side of a road; Convoi begins with Depardieu as a homeless man pushing a shopping cart with his possessions in it.

Note the shopping cart. (A symbol of Blier's
"wandering" characters.)

There are twists and turns in the plot, most of them heavy on the meta side. The film begins with homeless Depardieu meeting a wealthy-looking man (Christian Clavier) on the street. The wealthy man tells Gerard that they must hurry, as they have to kill a man. Why? “It’s in the script,” says Clavier, beginning a thread that runs throughout most of the film. 

Clavier is aware they’re operating from a script whereas Depardieu isn’t, until he is told. Then a further complication: new pages of the script are appearing with alarming frequency and neither man knows what he’s supposed to be doing. They wind up confronting the writers in their office and we learn then that what they’re involved in is seemingly a TV series (as the woman in charge is called a “show runner”). 

By this point Blier aficionados will recognize that the filmmaker is quoting his own work, as he was wont to do over the years. The notion of older men “losing their lines” and thus their direction in life appeared in Actors, and the inevitable obligatory killing hails from Buffet Froid.

As the rest of the film unfolds, we see the plot being constructed in front of us. First, there’s a woman (Farida Rahouadj) they meet who tells a sad story about her childhood, proving that, while these people might just be characters in a drama of some kind, they do have specific memories. 

Depardieu and Clavier then realize they have to kill Rahouadj, but once they do, the entire movie shifts gears — Depardieu’s long-lost girlfriend shows up and Clavier is left by his wife. The final movement of the film finds the two men’s lives completely flipped: Now Clavier is homeless and Depardieu is rich, living off the wealth of his 90-year-old wife.

Toward the end of the film the two leads talk a lot about food and how it should be prepared. One wonders why this discussion is so long, but by this time it was very clear that one of Depardieu’s main real-life addictions is food, so one gets the impression he didn’t actually need Blier’s lines to keep the scene going for as long as it does. It in fact serves another purpose, preparing us for a very sudden punchline to the film. 

The finale of Convoi might be sudden and perhaps not the “final statement” that one would’ve wished for from Blier, but early on he gives us another one of his flawless discussions, this time about art and death. 

In the latter half of the film, Depardieu and his girlfriend encounter a homeless man who turns out to be a film producer whose films all failed. He asks Depardieu if he knows “the difference between life and the movies.” He explains, “In life you die. In the movies, you never die. Never. For example, Mastroianni will never die.” 

Convoi may not be one of the “great last films” of a great filmmaker, but it does entertain and it places Blier’s absurdist universe into the current moment. And no, neither he nor his characters will ever really die. 

*****

Note: Thanks to friends Paul Gallagher and M. Faust for copies of the films. Thanks also to J-M Gregoire for references and translation, and Leonard Stoehr for inspiration.

Bibliography:
Blier, Bertrand, Going Places, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1974
Blier Bertrand, Pensées et répliques, le cherche midi, 2001, 2015
Harris, Sue, Bertrand Blier, Manchester University Press, 2001
Murat, Pierre, “Bertrand Blier en 2010 dans “Télérama” : “Pour moi, il n’y a plus de cinéma.” Telerama.
Predal, Rene, “Rencontre avec Bertrand Blier.” jeune cinéma, n°281, avril 2003

‘Épater le bourgeois!’: Deceased Artiste Bertrand Blier (Part 1 of two)

The films of Bertrand Blier, who died last week at 85, have been “buried” in the releases of foreign features on disc in the U.S. They were well-represented on VHS in the Eighties, but as times have changed, it has been accepted as common wisdom that his films are sexist and misogynist. What is ignored in that calculation is the fact that his farces in the Seventies and Eighties were also social satires and absurdist comedies that blatantly acknowledged that the lead male characters were sexist — and were depicted as idiots.

What has also been ignored — because it’s easier to ignore context than it is to pause one’s ire — is that his films from the 1990s on (actually 1989) featured three-dimensional female characters and offered actresses multi-faceted lead roles. I’ll get into this part of his career in the second part of this piece. First, let’s discuss the Seventies and Eighties work that made his name — and now has been labelled as “inappropriate” and not worth seeking out, when it should have a cult following. (Many lesser European filmmakers have developed cults in the U.S. and have their work available in snazzy box sets that are better designed than many of their films.)

First, my own fascination with Blier. I first saw Going Places at the Alliance Francaise in Manhattan some 40-plus years ago. The Alliance does attract younger, hipper viewers, but it also has always been a place for older ladies who are looking to see “classy” French cinema. Going Places (1974) is the tale of an odyssey taken by two fuck-up hoodlums who are constantly horny.

The young Blier (in a rare photo
without a pipe)

When a scene appeared in which our vulgar antiheroes sniffed a girl’s panties to determine from the “bouquet” how old she was, a group of old ladies abruptly stood up and left the theater. I realized at that moment that this Blier guy was definitely worth further research — anyone who could make me laugh while offending bluenoses deserved my attention.

In 2021, it was noted to me by my friend M. Faust that Blier had released another film, which apparently played in Canada but never in America. I had lost track of Blier’s filmography and thus asked friend Paul G. to see what was dwelling on the Torrents and it turned out that Blier’s entire filmo was up there with English subs (all but the final film, which I’ll get to in the second part of this piece). 

Thus, I did 14 episodes of the Funhouse TV show about Blier from the fall of 2021 to the spring of 2022, covering the four films that are currently available on U.S. DVD and another baker’s dozen of films that had never made it to disc (and in all cases after the late ’90s, save one, hadn’t even been distributed in the U.S. or basically even shown once at a film fest).

Blier with 'Les Valseuses' wine.
(The company mentions the "waltzers" translation,
not the other one...)

I realized Blier was decidedly out of fashion, and it was because his work was classified as un-p.c., anti-“woke,” crude, vulgar, sexist comedy. This didn’t come as a total surprise to me, since his films did walk that line, but they also were immaculately absurdist films with incredible performances by a host of France’s best actors and actresses. I watched or rewatched all of them in a short span of time, going on a Blier “bender,” and looked into the writing about his films and realized that they definitely were being dismissed out of hand and deserved public exposure.

One thing before I discuss his background and influences, and plunge into a discussion of each film: One must remember that in the Sixties and Seventies there were dozens of bad sex comedies being made, mostly in France and Italy. The majority of these were absolute garbage, not even sexy enough to merit a watch. Blier’s films were made on a much higher plane — he basically overturned the sex farce and often played with the tropes one found in them (especially those about lovers’ triangles; one of his most outrageous films was of course titled Ménage).

A big part of Blier’s biography was that his father was the character actor Bernard Blier, who worked in films by many, many great directors. He cast his father in a few of his early films and perhaps his wildest absurdist journey (Buffet Froid). Bernard’s death in 1989 became a linchpin that he returned to in a trio of later films.

Bertrand and Bernard Blier
on the set of Calmos.

As for his influences, he didn’t often mention film directors — although his obit in Liberation began with his praise for David Lynch. Seeing that I’ve used the word “absurdist” three times so far, it makes perfect sense that his stated heroes were playwrights from the Theater of the Absurd. His films often play like the works of Ionesco, Beckett, and Genet, with frequent two- or three-character scenes where the characters spout crazy dialogue at each other in a closed space.

Blier clearly was also a fan of Don Luis Buñuel, whose primary aim was “épater le bourgeois” (to shock the bourgeois) and who let his narratives wander — and his characters, especially in Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which came out two years before Blier’s breakthrough Les Valseuses.

Blier’s first theatrically released item was the full-length documentary Hitler, connais pas! (Hitler, never heard of him! 1963). It’s a very unique document, in that it’s both an authentic time capsule of its era and it also presents a heavily manipulated reality. A group of young people born after WWII — whom Blier noted in an intro text would all be around 20 years of age in 1963 — speak to the camera, talking about a variety of topics, including their daily routine, their schooling, dancing, dating (in the girls’ case, the experience of getting raped), love, and their future.

The interviews are intercut in such a way that it seems like the young people are reacting to each other’s stories. This could be coy in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, but even early on (he was 24 when the film was released, only slightly older than his interview subjects), Blier was keen to let his audience in on his manipulations. He groups them such that we see the innocents contrasted with the experienced subjects and the “reaction shots” he gathered with editor Michel David range from sympathetic to amused.

Blier’s first fiction feature was If I were a spy (1967). The film is a thriller about a doctor (played by Bernard Blier) who is summoned to make a house call and the patient isn’t there. The doctor soon finds himself being tracked by mysterious people, who just happen to know that he met that particular patient when he was in Poland on vacation (and the doctor just happens to be a Communist politically…).

Blier never made anything this straightforward again. The film shows the influence of Hitchcock and Clouzot (whom Bernard had worked with — and been slapped by!). The film has some stylish b&w visuals, but its main attraction is the score by Funhouse deity Serge Gainsbourg. 

The box set of LPs called “Initiales BO” comprised of select soundtracks by Gainsbourg contains a booklet that finds Serge’s collaborators talking about his scores. Blier admits straightforwardly that “All things considered, I prefer the score to the film.” He later had Gainsbourg score Ménage.

Seven years elapsed between Spy and his next feature, which was his breakthrough as an artist. The title Les valseuses (1974) literally means “The waltzers,” but in the slang of the period it meant “the balls” (testicles). Its American release title was Going Places and it was based on Blier’s novel, which chronicled the misadventures of two 20-something petty thieves. The film was a success around the world, making stars of its three leads: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and Miou-Miou. All three had come from a cabaret troupe, “the Cafe de la Gare.”

Here Blier delivered a blast of fresh air into French cinema and solidified his brash, non-conformist style of filmmaking, which was as offensive and charming as his lead characters. The novel makes more of the characters’ long hair and the fact that they are hated by the suburbanites that they meet, but there still are a few mentions of it in the film’s script.

In this regard, the film offers a look at the generation that had to find a direction (and couldn’t) after the politically explosive events of May 1968. The actress-director Josiane Balasko noted of Les Valseuses “… there we were on the screen, characters just like us, who spoke simply but with sophistication and style, in a way that worked.” [1988 quote, cited in Harris, p. 27]

“This was still the aftermath of May ’68 — Les Valseuses was a film against society. At that time, everything came under attack, because it felt good to attack. Everything was fair game: society, family. You had to be able to call your father a prick!” [1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 73]

The opening scene establishes our antiheroes in a single image — Dewaere pushing Depardieu in a stolen shopping cart down a suburban street. A very short while later they’re being pursued by the men of the town they’re in, to a jubilant score by Stephane Grappelli. The first line of the novel (which was the only one of Blier’s writings to be translated into English, after the great success of the film) is “We’re all fuckheads.”

The dark comedy that was to mark Blier’s work from this point on debuts here. He also introduces vernacular-laced dialogue and the kinds of characters that were to populate his films up until 1989: headstrong, moronic males and the women who have been emotionally numbed by the males’ impulsive, childlike (and very horny) behavior.

Some critics said that the film itself is sexist, but this is belied by the way that Blier makes certain to include moments where the characters betray each other. Depicting sexists as such and commenting on how they operate makes the film far different from the average sex farce, which was sexist in its very essence and never rose above that level of straightforward exploitation. Blier’s humor was often vulgar, but it was also subversive.

In her book-length study titled simply Bertrand Blier (2001), Sue Harris discusses one of the scenes that most offended feminists, where Depardieu and Dewaere accost a woman (Brigitte Fossey) who is nursing her baby, and Depardieu offers her money to suckle Dewaere (who is trying to figure out why he can’t get it up lately); she accepts the money and seems oddly turned on while the act takes place. Buñuel very much liked the scene (see below), but for many feminists it was just too much.

Harris’s take on the scene? “… the eroticism which emerges [from the scene] is, paradoxically for [the two men] and the spectator, located within and for the female subject…. As the action of the scene advances, the mother clearly begins to experience a sexual pleasure that surpasses the arousal of the men. Yet, at the same time she continues to look directly at her aggressors, refusing to see them as such, and challenging them to make sense of her reactions.

“In this way, the female character rejects the abuse of male power that they seek to enact on her, and displaces the centre of narrative attention, against the narrative agents, from the male to the female.” [pp. 123-124]

In a 2010 interview in Telerama, Blier was asked about his reputation as a misogynist. He responded: “In my films, it's the men who always have the dirty roles. I only filmed morons. Cowards. None of them have the key to the world of women: they don’t know how it works. Because they are very macho, like in Les Valseuses. Or because they are too much in love, as in Get Out Your Handkerchiefs. Even in Beau-Père Patrick Dewaere is a dismaying loser... In fact, all the men of my generation started out macho. Me as well…. Do you remember the idiots in Les Valseuses: they are on a dune and Depardieu says to Dewaere: ‘There is definitely an ass waiting for us somewhere.’ All the bullshit from guys, it's right there….”

To further clarify how Blier saw himself, the interviewer asked, “So, you’re not a misogynist, but a misanthrope?” His answer: “Ah, yes, I am! Totally!” [Murat, Telerama]

The most interesting transition that occurs in the film happens when the two leads meet up and then try to seduce an older ex-con, played by the always great Jeanne Moreau. Moreau is only in the film for a few minutes, but her grasp of her character is so perfect that one can sense Depardieu and Dewaere being brought up to a higher level of performance. 

This is especially true when her character kills herself and they are left alone in the hotel room they booked with her. At this point they flee back to Miou-Miou and hug her as two little boys would their mother after a traumatic incident.

The fact that both dolts shortly thereafter go back to being sexist towards Miou-Miou’s character is the perfect example of how irretrievably moronic they are. Blier’s social satire does not offer solutions to the problem of sexism; he just perfectly illustrates how it operates. As for how Miou-Miou herself saw the picture, she said in 1976 that “In films directors take great pleasure in showing working women as miserable, drab types. The stars who play these parts love making themselves ugly, love ‘getting into the part.” [Les Valseuses] was the first time ever that a film showed us just as we were.” [1976 quote, cited in Harris, p. 27]

One of the more interesting changes that Blier made from novel to film script (cowritten with Philippe Dumarçay) is that the novel ends with them dying in a car crash in the very car they rejiggered to get revenge on an enemy earlier on. In the film they get away scot-free, with the Grappelli music adding to the sense of absolute freedom. 

The element that most definitely made critics of the film feel that it was advocating for the behavior of the lead characters was most likely the incredible charisma of Depardieu and Dewaere (who also functioned perfectly as a comedy team). It is their likability that makes the characters somewhat sympathetic, even when they are being complete shits. They and Miou-Miou became stars as a result of the film’s immense popularity.

There were critics and other noted individuals (including Chantal Akerman, who was a master filmmaker, no question, but did she have a sense of humor?) who loathed the piece from beginning to end. Most likely, their negative comments drew even more spectators to the film and it was No. 2 at the French box office in ’74 — right behind Emmanuelle. Yes, my friends, sexuality had a place in moviemaking and movie-consumption in France in the Seventies! Americas in the 2020s, on the other hand, seems embarrassed by sexual topics, unless they are presented in very dour and grim based-on-a-true-story dramas.

Blier remained very proud that a man he considered a great filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, praised the film to him. “I met him one day by chance and he said to me: ‘Ah, the train scene… with the woman giving them her breast… it’s very erotic!’ I was flooded with happiness….” [Murat, Telerama]

Miou-Miou and the young Isabelle Huppert.

Although the critics would often say that Blier was incredibly unsubtle, one can see just how delicate the balance of satire in his films was when one watches the American remake of Les Valseuses, made by John Turturro as The Jesus Rolls (2019). Turturro eliminated the idea that the two characters are young men with long hair moving through backwards conservative small towns and focused on merely recreating each scene.

Turturro did include one major moment from the novel that was absent in Blier’s film — a long speech given by Miou-Miou’s character about how awful her beauty salon job is — but otherwise, he shoehorned his “Jesus” character from The Big Lebowski into the Depardieu role and then just offered up a pretty reverent (but unnecessary) remake of Blier’s original.

The Jesus Rolls.

Sue Harris notes in her book that, from Les Valseuses on, Blier has three dominant themes in his work: the difficulty of male-female relationships, patterns of interdependence, and attacks on bourgeois society. She also cites a very interesting quotation from Blier who noted that he would “prefer the viewer to be an observer rather than be involved.”

This is key to understanding this period in his work: He is not trying to get the audience to identify with the protagonists, nor is he advocating their behavior, but he does want the viewer to recognize the caveman instincts of his sexist males and the utter exhaustion of his seen-it-all women.

Blier’s follow-up to Les Valseuses was the very bizarre farce Calmos (aka Femmes Fatales, 1976). It’s rarely seen in the U.S., but that was true decades before the notion of political correctness dictated what certain viewers would pay to see. It is Blier’s craziest statement on the “war between the sexes” and he later decided it was a misstep. Still, it has some great insane plot twists and introduces the notion of fantasy (even sci-fi) into Blier’s “universe.”

The plot is overtly ridiculous from beginning to end. Here we find two refined French gentlemen, played by Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort, who decide they must run away because their ladies are simply demanding too much sex. The film grows in absurdity when they return to the city and then exit once more, only to encounter a female army (run by the wonderfully named German actress Dora Doll).

Again, the men here are acknowledged to be idiots with giant egos. They are cartoonlike, as are the women. In her book Sue Harris discusses Blier’s tendency to play with gender roles; here the horniness is attributed to the women (who are not numb in this instance) and Blier takes his characters through a series of ridiculous situations that ends in a journey “inside” a woman.

The film was distributed by New Line in America but it never showed up on VHS, never mind DVD or Blu-ray. Blier was surely fine with this, as his final summation of the picture was as a “youthful error” and “the greatest mess in my life. The script was good, but I had neither the money nor the actors to shoot it.” [Murat, Telerama]

Blier bounced back from the failure of Calmos to craft the film that netted him a Best Foreign Film Oscar, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978). The film is suitably dark and absurd, but it struck a chord somehow with American viewers who presumably responded to the three leads: Depardieu, Dewaere, and Carole Laure. In France, Blier was thought of as, per the Cahiers, “the father and spiritual adviser of this family of comics,” meaning the Cafe de la Gare generation of comic actors. [1996 quote, quoted in Harris, p. 26.]

Handkerchiefs is not as exuberant and nonconformist as Les Valseuses; here the two male leads are clearly “adults,” but they remain men who can’t satisfy a woman sexually or emotionally. (True to men’s nature, they’re very concerned about the former and don’t think about the latter.)

Gérard invites Patrick to sleep with his wife because he (Gérard) can’t make her happy. Patrick quickly becomes part of a threesome with the couple, but he also cannot satisfy Laure. The film is best when exploring this weird triangle. In one of those plot twists that could be used in the liberated Seventies but never now, Laure becomes close to a 13-year-old math scholar who she finds is sympathetic to her. The proceedings move in a more unexpected direction when the boy impregnates her.

This is done with a tender, sympathetic tone, but, yes, most likely it could never be done today unless it was made by Gaspar Noe or a gay independent director. (One does feel that Blier opened up a lane for auteurs like the great Francois Ozon and Gaspar Noe, whose work Blier praised — but said he needed better dialogue!)

Blier with his Oscar.

With its winning the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Handkerchiefs has been considered the high water mark of Blier’s career, at least in America. The truth of the matter is that, while it is a delight to see Depardieu and Dewaere as a comedy team once again (it was their second and last outing together), the film is lacking the crazy energy of Blier’s best pictures.

Perhaps the scenes with the teen protagonist being bullied make it play more like a Truffaut film. Blier dealt with childish behavior as seen in adults — seeing teens in one of his films does very much change the tone, making it temporarily have a “realistic” feel, whereas Blier’s farces from the Seventies and Eighties clearly took place on the fringes of society with darkly humorous developments around every corner.

Carole Laure’s Solange was also viewed by some critics as being a repetition of the Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou) character in Les Valseuses. Sue Harris commented on the similar frigidity/numbness of the two characters: “[The characters’ frigidity] can be alternately read as an expression of their fatigue or ennui at the cultural sexual expectations of them both as women and as modes of representation, as well as of that very emotional apathy that [Molly] Haskell sees as the lot of the cinematic female in the early 1970s, the woman who has been so many (but frequently the same) things to so many men… that she has arrived ‘anaesthetized, at an emotional and cultural “stasis,” a death.’ (Haskell, From Reverence to Rape, 1974, Holt, Rinehart & Winston). For a male director to explore this, specifically in performance, and to anticipate so much of what is of concern to feminist commentators may surely be argued to be progressive?” [Harris, p. 128]

Speaking of a completely non-realistic film, the next Blier film was Buffet Froid (aka Cold Cuts, 1979), which is pretty much a Theater of the Absurd play transformed into a film. Depardieu has a discussion with a man (Michel Serrault) on a subway platform about a knife he has and the idea of murder — then he sees that man laying in a subway tunnel fatally stabbed with the same knife (but still talking!).

Shortly thereafter his wife is killed. He speaks with a police detective (Bernard Blier) who lives in his apartment complex. The gallows humor and urban paranoia ratchet up until suddenly — we’re in the country and see that Depardieu is now on vacation with the police detective and the murderer of his wife (Jean Carmet). The three men each suspect that they will be killed, and so on until the darkly comic end.

What links this to the preceding films is that, once again, the male characters are all acknowledged to be idiots. What is a new departure starting in this film is a layer of visual complexity that enters Blier’s work. He began here to offer both frames-within-the-frame, usually in the form of a doorway, a window or a mirror. This form of imagery was used by all the great Expressionist directors and in the Seventies was a hallmark of Fassbinder’s work.

Also, the film has elements from the thriller world, but also the “otherness” of the Theater of the Absurd. The opening discussion between Depardieu and Serrault on the empty Metro platform is both amusing and creepy. Said Blier in 1986: “There’s never anyone in my films. Go in the street, it’s empty. The underground is empty. There maybe a train, but there’s no one in it.” [cited in Harris, p. 59]

 And why not introduce one more film “that couldn’t be made today”? In 1981 Blier’s Beau-Père was released, based on his novel. Blier wanted to explore the notion of a man making a very bad decision (because, of course, “We’re all fuckheads”). He also clearly did not want to rewrite or remake Lolita, so his fuck-up hero, played by Patrick Dewaere, spends the first half of the film caring for his teen stepdaughter (Ariel Besse) but rejecting her romantic advances.

As the film goes on, he does give in — and it is indeed seen as both something that happened out of sheer loneliness on the part of both characters and a very bad decision by a very confused man. The film has elements of humor, but it is one of the most serious of his films in his “first career” — he later stated his early films constituted a “first career” and said “his second career” began with Merci La Vie (1991).

Here, the screw-up nature of Dewaere’s character is seen as a tragic flaw, and the girl’s decision is one that develops when she loses her mother (Nicole Garcia, whose death in the film starts off the actual plot) and is horribly lonely. The “framed” visuals and slow zooms into and away from the characters illustrate the way in which the characters feel trapped by their situation.

What is also significant, in light of the fact that Blier’s critics decried him as a misogynist, is that the stepdaughter is depicted throughout as the emotionally mature half of the relationship. Sue Harris puts it in a more formal way when discussing women in general in Blier’s films (with her “unfinished” label here seeming to harken to younger female characters like the stepdaughter here).

She states that “Woman in Blier’s films… is an essentially transgressive figure whose powerful regenerative presence acts as a constant check to an otherwise phallocentric discourse. Her presence is disturbing to patriarchal society insofar as her ‘unfinished’ body represents both the destruction of imposed social boundaries and taboos, and the ultimate permeability of the human character. Moreover, in cinematic terms, her consistently ambiguous narrative function and unconventional image also pose a threat to the established gender hierarchy with which spectators are familiar.” [Harris, p. 115]

The finale in fact indicates that Dewaere’s character may potentially make other stupid moves in his later life. It’s a rather surprising ending that does find Blier condemning the character’s choice to get involved with a minor; Blier rarely didn’t start presenting “right” and “wrong” options for his characters until the brilliant Too Beautiful for You in 1989.

Dewaere and Blier.

Blier had planned other films for the Depardieu-Dewaere team but it was not to be — Patrick Dewaere fatally shot himself on July 16, 1982, ending what was a short but triumphant career. His suicide left a void in French cinema that remained for many years.

The next two films directed by Blier play like works for hire, because they were packaged for certain stars to appear in. They still do have wonderful scenes, though, and the first has the current finest actress in France, Isabelle Huppert, camping it up as an obscure object of sexual desire.

My Best Friend’s Girl (1983), cowritten by Blier and Polanski collaborator Gerard Brach, was devised originally for the very popular screen comedian Coluche and Patrick Dewaere to star in as friends who are both in love with the same woman. This casting was intentional, as Blier was aware that both actors had dated the same woman. (Dewaere being with her before Coluche stole her away.) Blier wanted Miou-Miou to be in the female lead, but she turned it down because she too had dated both men, having had a long relationship with Dewaere that produced one child.

Thus, Coluche was cast with Thierry Lhermitte playing his best friend and rival. The film is the nearest that Blier came to making a conventional French sex farce, and that impulse seems to be the driving factor in a lot of the scenes, in which we are taken through a variety of the situations that would occur in a standard-issue sex farce or screwball comedy about a threesome, with the difference here being Blier’s dark humor inserted at various points and the fact that almost all the action takes place in a rented suite at a ski lodge, thus making the film play like both a sex comedy and an absurdist farce.

The film is of interest primarily to fans of the three leads, but it did notably create the scenario that became the backbone of the later Too Beautiful for You, in which a character chooses a dowdier-looking person as a romantic/sex partner (here, Coluche; there, Josiane Balasko) over an idyllic-looking alternative (here, Lhermitte; there, Carole Bouquet.)

Notre Histoire (aka Our Story, 1984) was conceived of as a vehicle for superstar Alain Delon. It begins in a classic fashion for Blier, with Delon and Nathalie Baye on a train telling each other stories. Delon becomes utterly obsessed with Baye, and things move on from there. It turns out that Delon’s character is an utter alcoholic (it’s amusing that Delon still looks pretty handsome as a chronic drunk) and that Baye is playing games with him, avoiding his overtures as the two live in houses that are mirror images of each other.

Delon produced the film, and so it has the single most “normal” ending of any film Blier ever directed. In many of Blier’s best films there is a “sting in the tail,” but here one of the most normal “explanations” for the absurdist happenings is supplied. Despite this letdown of an ending, the film does have some great scenes and, moving toward Blier’s big shift in 1989, the men here are all depicted as well-intentioned but utterly moronic, while the women are stronger and more certain of their actions.

A number of stories are told by the characters to the other characters (and directly to the camera in most cases). The notion of reliable storytelling is also teased here — is anything we’re hearing actually true in this world of constant fiction? Blier said that “What interested me in Notre Histoire was to get spectators to ask themselves questions about how stories are told in film.” [1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 42]

This picture had no U.S. distribution and has never appeared on U.S. home entertainment formats. If you want a subtitled copy of the film on disc, you need to buy the Korean region-free disc, which is the only version of the film to have English subs. 

Ménage (originally Tenue de Soiree/Evening Wear, 1986) was a high point for Blier, in that it contains a number of his themes and tropes and was quite before its time in its depiction of an individual, played by Gérard Depardieu, who is bisexual and very happy to be so.

At this point, it probably needs to be mentioned that, yes, Depardieu was one of the most prominent “faces” of Blier’s humor (and later, his emotion). The charges that have emerged against Depardieu by his female costars and some journalists are indeed very serious, but again, we crash up against the notion of separating the art from the artist. (As one of the best summations on this situation, I refer you to Nick Cave’s statement on this way of viewing great art by people who are objectionable in private life.)

Depardieu has been one of the finest actors that France ever produced; that much is inarguable. He also is a man of multiple addictions (liquor and food for sure; most likely drugs in the Seventies when he was at his thinnest) and obsessive behavior. He has also been a sensitive performer who has given extraordinary performances; one of the many directors who elicited these terrific performances was Blier.

I believe that the respect for Depardieu the actor is what occasioned the petition that was signed by 50 of his acting peers and major French artists (including an ample amounts of actresses, and Blier). They were not saying he was innocent of the charges against him, but rather that he deserved a fair trial and that these charges needed to be decided in France’s justice system and not in the media.

Those who cannot at all distinguish the artist’s private life from their work will thus already have an axe to grind with the Blier films that Depardieu starred in (six of those; he was a guest star in three others). All I can impart about this is that the films themselves remain excellent and his performances in them remain top-notch. I know that a request for viewers to keep historical context in mind falls on deaf ears, so I will simply say that these films are quite special and reflect a unique sensibility that still should be experienced by viewers who have a taste for dark and absurdist humor. 

Back to Ménage, which did quite well on the arthouse circuit in America and was released on VHS with English subs. (No DVD or Blu-ray in the U.S. to date.) It’s Blier’s best revamp of the sex farce and, as Sue Harris points out in her book, is a perfect example of how he played with gender roles in his comedy. The plot can best be summarized this way: Depardieu’s big but elegant seducer is taken when he meets a couple who are about to break up. He is attracted to the woman (Miou-Miou) but is even more attracted to the small, schlemiel male (Michel Blanc). It is noted in the film that both women and men come on to Depardieu and he could have his pick of the litter; his choice of Blanc as a lover seems willfully perverse and related to his desire to see Blanc “transformed.” For his part, Blanc resists heavily but eventually gives in to Depardieu’s wishes and starts dressing and acting female, which turns the film into a celebration of polymorphous sexuality. 

Add to the above the twin joys of Blier continuing his “obstructed” and frame-within-a-frame visuals and a terrifically catchy score by Gainsbourg, and you have one of Blier’s most “complete” comedies.

The film’s emphasis on sexuality made some critics speak out against it, including feminist writers who condemned it as sexist. Miou-Miou answered this charge in a very eloquent (and quite pithy) way. Her take? “What is a misogynist film anyway? At the moment, all you see are films with men in them. Les ripoux, Marche a la ombre, Les specialistes, Trois hommes et un couffin, Rambo, and that kind of thing. Bertrand at least creates parts for women, terrific parts. To call him a misogynist would simply be masochistic.” (The last sentence being a lot catchier in French: “C’est cera maso de dire qu’il est miso.”)[1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 113]

I will end this first part of the piece with the film that was a complete turnaround for Blier. Too Beautiful for You (1989) was a worldwide hit that won the Grand Prix special at Cannes, made the most money of any of his films, and was critically lauded around the globe. It also was the film where he dropped his studies of sexist men and polymorphous perversity and started telling stories with fully developed female characters who were not only smarter than the men (they always were that) but were now sympathetic and able to be identified with.

Said Blier, “I even shot a 100% sentimental film, Trop belle pour toi. My only classy movie. Proper. Awarded at Cannes. This one was not loved by Buñuel but by Claude Sautet (Cesar & Rosalie): he wrote me a rave letter...” [Predal, jeune cinema]

In the second part of this piece I’ll be discussing the three films he made after Too Beautiful with actress Anouk Grinberg that he claimed started a “second career” for him. I would argue that Too Beautiful actually began that part of his filmography because it’s a particularly sober-minded comedy that does have very funny scenes but is not a farce in the usual sense (despite its premise, which would seem classically farcical).

This is because one genuinely feels for the characters, which is not something that can be said for the earlier phase of Blier’s work, as funny and imaginative as it was. (Only Beau-Père and Notre Histoire had previously contained a serious undertone.)

The “second career” he did admit “came from” Too Beautiful. “In fact, after Tenue de soiree, I had the impression of having finished my career: from Valseuses to Tenue de soiree, it was a beautiful journey with a beginning and an end, and I was sincerely tempted to stop there. But you don't stop when you're successful. Yet, Tenue had worked very well.” [Predal, jeune cinema]

Too Beautiful was indeed a major turnaround, which brings Blier out of the world of so-called “misogynist cinema” (although it did star Depardieu, who is now considered an “inappropriate” presence but has indeed been one of the finest actors France ever produced, and this was 1989!). The absurdism is still very much in place and Blier made certain that this more serious story (as with Beau-Père) emphasizes the frame-within-a-frame visual style and the slow, graceful pans and zooms around and into the characters.

The premise is a simple one, so simple that I’m amazed it wasn’t remade as a terrible American comedy, as so many French farces were in the Eighties. A business man (Depardieu) has a drop-dead gorgeous wife (Carole Bouquet) but begins cheating on her with his secretary, who is a plainer, slightly chubby woman (Josiane Balasko).

The businessman works through his problems, feeling that his wife is too perfect (and, as the title says, too beautiful for him), but we also are treated to (via direct-address to the camera) the feelings of the secretary, who comes across as the most intriguing character in the film, if only because of her complete normalcy. We also feel for the wife, who delivers very poignant monologues about feeling lesser than others because her looks have kept men thinking about her in only one way. 

The wonderfully stylized visuals emphasized the “trapped” feelings the characters have — as when the secretary talks on the phone to her boss and they are each in their own little glass cubicle. Harris comments on the direct-address in Blier’s work in a section she calls “Techniques of disruption”: “Blier’s films are therefore conceived of not as objective creations, designed to remain on the screen and be viewed passively at a safe distance, but rather as exchanges with the spectator, where he or she is cajoled into a critical exchange, appealed to as a complicit participant in the ongoing action.” [Harris, p. 38]

Colette, the character played by Balasko, was truly a new character for Blier’s filmic world. She is at first taken aback by her boss’s seduction, then surrenders to it, but is always a bit wary of his intentions, until she realizes that she, too, wants to have a “covert” affair (she has a very staid boyfriend). Then the two do fall in love. 

Harris’s book (written after the three Grinberg films had also come out) also offers a contextualization of the Colette character by noting that Blier creates “complex” female characters. “Blier’s characteristic representation of women refuses the commonplace simplicity and covert eroticism of conventional cinematic portrayals of the female.”[p. 116] It’s also clear that Blier found the free flow of male sexuality had reached its absurdist peak in Ménage and he wanted to move on to more complicated subject matter.

And just in case one might’ve thought that Blier had left behind his Theater of the Absurd penchant for self-reflexive (these days called “meta”) jokes, throughout the film the music of Schubert is played at intensely emotional moments. The character of Depardieu’s son plays a recording of Schubert while the family is eating dinner and Depardieu proclaims his loathing of it.

So, at the very end of the film, when what had to happen does happen with Depardieu’s two relationships, Blier introduces Schubert on the soundtrack to underscore the emotion of the moment. And Depardieu walks off slowly — only to return to the camera and shout, “Il fait chier Schubert, vous comprenez? Il fait chier!”/“It pisses me off, your Schubert, understand? It pisses me off!” (Translated rather loosely as “Your Schubert’s a pain in the ass! A goddamned pain!”)

His characters might have undergone a transformation into three-dimensional beings, but there was no way Blier’s films were going to become cute and cuddly…. 

Note: Thanks to friends Paul Gallagher and M. Faust for copies of the films. Thanks also to J-M Gregoire for references and translation, and Leonard Stoehr for inspiration. 

Bibliography: Blier, Bertrand, Going Places, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1974
Blier Bertrand, Pensées et répliques, le cherche midi, 2001, 2015
Harris, Sue, Bertrand Blier, Manchester University Press, 2001
Murat, Pierre, “Bertrand Blier en 2010 dans “Télérama” : “Pour moi, il n’y a plus de cinéma.” Telerama.
Predal, Rene, “Rencontre avec Bertrand Blier.” jeune cinéma, n°281, avril 2003