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.
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| The young Blier (in a rare photo without a pipe) |
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).
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| Blier with 'Les Valseuses' wine. (The company mentions the "waltzers" translation, not the other one...) |
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.
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| Bertrand and Bernard Blier on the set of Calmos. |
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.”
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 on Blier, 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.
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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]
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| Miou-Miou and the young Isabelle Huppert. |
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.
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| The Jesus Rolls. |
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).
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 directions 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!)
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| Blier with his Oscar. |
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.
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.
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| Dewaere and Blier. |
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 woulds 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 comes 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
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