Bertrand Blier’s Buffet froid (1979)

Buffet froid is often spoken of as an absurd black comedy, and also seen as Blier's masterpiece. I can't disagree with any of those words, although I have to add that in this film Blier is doing something quite extraordinary: he is reversing expectations at every possible opportunity, and in so doing creating a hilarious and completely unpredictable movie.

A number of scenes are set in the area of La Défense, which was at the time under development. Unemployed thirtysomething Alphonse Tram (Gérard Depardieu) addresses the only other person at the La Défense métro station (an accountant), and on showing the man his flick knife appears to be threatening him, although he offers him the knife which the man puts on another seat away from them, but which mysteriously disappears. The accountant makes his getaway on the next train but then, on wandering around some underground corridors, Alphonse finds the man dying with the knife sticking in him. Something to do with Alphonse's false memory, or...what?

Alphonse has been living alone with his wife in a new tower block in a very plush appartment for an unemployed man, until he learns on his return home that a new resident has moved in. Alphonse goes to welcome the man – Morvandieu (Bernard Blier), a police inspector – and tells him that a man has been murdered in the métro. But Morvandieu has no interest in this: he believes that criminals are best left in the outside world, instead of inside where they can teach innocent people to be criminals; in any case, we come to learn that Morvandieu has murdered his musician wife because he hated her music. When an unnamed killer (Jean Carmet) confesses to Alphonse that he's killed Alphonse's wife, Alphonse invites him in and so, along with Morvandiau, another of Blier's film trios is created.

And they will go on to more murders mostly without apparent reason until the trio is broken by another killer, hired for the purpose of murdering Alphonse, although he kills Carmet by accident (Morvanieu having told him that he is Alphonse), and when the duo chase after the hired killer a mysterious and seductive young woman helps them and they end up in a rowing boat. Alphonse, in one of the few logical moments in the film, kills the killer by throwing his knife into his back. And then, about to retrieve his knife, he learns that Morvandieu can't swim, so drowns him. It seems that Alphonse and the young woman are about to get very intimate, although she shoots him dead because her father was the accountant on the métro.

There are no answers because there are no questions, or no questions as there are no answers, but this is indeed a masterpiece from Bertrand Blier.

Bertrand Blier's Trop belle pour toi | Too Beautiful for You (1989)

Bernard Barthélémy (Gérard Depardieu) is the director of a car company. He lives a very comfortable life married to his beautiful wife Florence (Carole Bouquet), and then the plain, plump Colette (Josiane Balasko) becomes a secretary in his firm and he's lost. This is not young love, it's mature love and it's passionate without being over the top or in any way superficial.

Hilary Mantel gave a negative review of this in The Spectator in 2019, but then...Hilary Mantel? The Spectator? Say no more. Far more interesting is the late highly esteemed American critic Robert Ebert on this film and French films in general: 'Somebody was asking the other day what the difference was between French and American films. American films are about plots, I said, and French films are about people. You can usually tell where a plot is heading, but a person, now – a person will fool you.' This is a wonderful observation of French cinema and Hilary Mantel should stick to, er, I'm not too sure as I see nothing of interest in her novels.

Bertrand Blier's film, on the other hand, is something of a masterpiece. But a subtle one.

Bertrand Blier's Tenue de soirée | Ménage / Evening Dress (1986)

Bertrand Blier's films are of course a little out of the usual. This is a weird film in a sense, although bearing in mind Blier's films in general it should perhaps be accepted as par for the course. Much like in Les Valseuses we have a trio, but as Patrick Dewaere had killed himself four years previously Blier had to find Depardieu and Miou-Miou another member of the gang – hence, er, Michel Blanc.

Bob (Depardieu) stumbles upon a violent conversation in a bar or club between Monique (Miou-Miou) and her partner Antoine (Blanc), in which she rails against her poverty-stricken life – they are later found to live in a wreck of a tiny caravan – and the fact that she's not had a bath in a long time.

Along comes an inferior knight in less than shining armour in the shape of Bob, who slaps Monique to the floor and hurls a large sum of money at her. A few moments later Bob is lavishing them with more money and telling them that it's easy to get. Er, how?

In no time Bob has introduced Monique and Antoine to the twilight world of the burglary of mansions, and he has a nose (yes, of course we think of Cyrano) for where the upper middle-class stash their money. With a little initial reluctance, Bob has two protégés, although Antoine the bald-headed weed will take some time to come round.

Monique is smitten and sees Bob as her entrée to a new world, one of living well above the poverty line. Unfortunately her attempts to coax Bob away from her partner with her sexual charms leave him cold: he's had loads of women, but got bored, and now he's in love with Antoine.

Not without Monique's disagreement Bob manages to claim Antoine's ass, but the trouble (for Monique) is that Bob really likes anal sex, so Monique is side-lined, and in the end isn't even allowed in on a threesome. She rebels and is tempted away from the Bob/Antoine duo by Pedro (Michel Creton), whose place on the Costa del Sol is the decisive factor. Of course, she doesn't realise that Bob has just sold her into Pedro the pimp's prostitute ring.

So Bob lives with Antoine in the latter's hell, where Bob treats him as a wife to do the cooking and household chores while he enjoys himself with other men. Until Antoine explodes at the abuse he's going through and Bob buys female clothes for Antoine and takes him to a gay night club: disaster, as Monique is there touting for custom, Antoine becomes a killer and is close to killing Bob.

Unfortunately the film falls flat on its face at the end when the trio all become prostitutes, with Bob and Antoine as transvestites. It's a pity, as this film has potentially a great deal to say about  gender and sexuality change in general.

Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (1974)

Les Valseuses is a ground-breaking film of the 1970s, and in particular led to making Gérard Depardieu and Bertrand Blier household names. It shows amoral behaviour, is violent, sexy and at the same time amusing. A pair of petty thieves in their twenties – Jean-Claude (Gérard Lepardieu) and Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere) – run riot having sex with women, stealing where they can, menacing people and generally having what they consider to be a good time.

They have little respect for anyone, terrify an elderly woman and rob her, terrify a young mother on a train, and steal a number of cars and quite an amount of money from the doctor who helps Pierrot with a gun injury when a man shot him between the legs for stealing his car. A hopelessly bad couple of men then?

Well, yes, although you can't help but laugh at them and, oddly, like them, although this is no comedy. Take, for instance, the way they break into a deserted house and guess the age of a young girl who lives there with her family, the way they look at her underwear and sniff her knickers to judge her age, like connoisseurs of vintage wine. Or Pierrot pleading with the gun-wielding hairdresser to spare him as he only 'borrowed' his car.

Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou) is the hairdresser's assistant who goes off with the pair and then returns, although they go back to her a few times, using her for sex and she's a willing partner to a threesome (well, this is the 1970s), but they're not happy with her because she's not having noisy orgasms and throwing herself around. Cue for the older Jeanne Pirolle (Jeanne Moreau) to leave prison after a number of years and team up in a threesome, only to leave the room while the pair are deep in post-coital sleep, lie on the other bed and, in despair, shoot a bullet between her legs. This of course recalls the bullet the hairdresser fired between Pierrot's legs, as the trio recalls the trio in Jules et Jim, and Jeanne's suicide recalls Catherine's suicide in Jules et Jim. In a minor and much more different way, the sexual initiation of the sixteen-year-old Jacqueline (an early performance by Isabelle Huppert) also remembers the famous Jules et Jim trio.

As Jean-Claude, Pierrot and Marie-Ange drive off we know not where, they enter a tunnel, and everything is black as the screen credits begin to roll. It seems a fitting ending: a drive into nothingness.