Blier, Bertrand

How Much Do You Love Me?

In this gleeful, bawdy sex comedy, Francois, a balding, downtrodden office worker tells the gorgeous prostitute, Daniela (Monica Bellucci), that he's won the lottery and invites her home to spend his money. The ensuing negotiations of cat-and-mouse are played out with verve and wit by both, and by a supporting cast of vicariously engaged friends and neighbors, including Gerard Depardieu as Monica Bellucci's bedraggled mobster boyfriend, Charly.

Too Beautiful for You

In the films of Bertrand Blier, love is a virus that sends its victims on a feverish fling of impulsive passion before leaving them abandoned and alone. The difference in Too Beautiful for You is an empathy and warmth rarely seen in Blier's often cynical work. Gérard Depardieu is the successful car dealer ambushed by Cupid when plain-looking secretary Josiane Balasko clumps into the office. It seems to defy all reason, how this frumpy, dumpy woman with eyes that caress lures Depardieu from elegant wife Carole Bouquet, a woman so poised and perfect she's more trophy than trophy wife, but love follows no reason. Neither does Blier's film, which dances through fantasies and flashbacks with the abandon of a daydream. It makes for a confusing story but a vivid experience, all passion and music and joy and pain: love, in all its obsessive, destructive ecstasy. --Sean Axmaker

Gerard Depardieu delivers a riveting (The New York Times) performance as a man torn between ethereal beauty and earthy passion in this hypnotic (Los Angeles Times) portrait of a most unusual love triangle. Winner* of five César Awards, including Best Picture, this witty, provocative tale offers fresh insight into the old, old story of marital infidelity (Variety). Bernard (Depardieu) has a stunningly gorgeous wife (Carole Bouquet), a thriving career and two beautiful children. But his enviable life spirals out of control when he falls madly in love with hisdecidedly plain secretary (Josiane Balasko). Could it be possible that physical beauty is finally no match for a woman who can touch a man's heart? *1990: Director, Actress (Bouquet), Screenplay, Editing

Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil

For cinephiles who enjoy experimental storytelling, Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil offers a fascinating movie experience. While providing a tour-de-force showcase for French actress Anouk Grinberg, director Bertrand Blier defies conventional narrative in telling the troubled story of Victorine, a young woman from the tenements of Marseilles whose life is comprised (at various ages from 12 to 25, all played by Grinberg) of a series of surreal incidents that take on the unsettling quality of a fever dream. Social conventions are reversed, moral codes are rendered anarchic (e.g., burglary is encouraged), and linear chronology is replaced by a timeline that leaps forward and back on a whim, leaving the viewer deliberately disoriented, with none of the familiar reference points for following the story. But there's a method to Blier's cinematic madness: Not only is the film beautifully photographed and brilliantly acted (with a cast including Marcello Mastroianni and then-newcomer Olivier Martinez), but there's a kind of frazzled logic to Blier's depiction of lost innocence, social corruption, and borderline insanity. It's not for all tastes, but Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil (the name of a schoolyard game in the film) is a challenging drama that rewards attentive viewers. --Jeff Shannon

From acclaimed director Bertrand Blier (Get Out Your Handerchiefs, Too Beautiful for You) comes Un Deux Trois Soleil, the dreamlike tale of Victorine, a young girl growing up in the slums of Marseilles with her alcoholic father (Marcello Mastroianni - star of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2), and her crazy mother. Bizarre and surreal at the same time, reminiscent of Buñuel and Fellini, Un Deux Trois Soleil is innovative, outrageous, and a triumph for Mastroianni, in one of his most unusual roles. The film also features Olivier Martinez (Taking Lives, Unfaithful) in his breakthrough role for which he won the 1994 César Award for Most Promising Actor.

Beau Pere

Buffet Froid

Playing murder as farce is nothing new for French filmmakers, but Bertrand Blier brings the concept to a new level in Buffet Froid, a bleak, ironic black comedy. An unemployed man is enmeshed in a nightmarish situation that plays itself out with unapologetic illogic: he falls in with shady characters like his wife's killer, a corrupt police chief, and a young beauty who is definitely not what she seems. Like all Blier romps (most notably the scatological Going Places and Ménage), Buffet Froid is definitely not for everyone, and Gérard Depardieu fans might feel especially cheated by his passive performance. But if your own taste runs to the surrealistic dreamscapes of Luis Buñuel's final films, then Blier's cheerfully amoral tale is worth seeing. --Kevin Filipski

Going Places

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

Thoroughly safe and mild compared to Going Places--the anarchic, something-to-offend-everyone earlier collaboration of Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and French director Bertrand Blier--the 1977 Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is an outwardly civilized satire with a heart so dark it's a wonder you can see the film's images. Depardieu plays the bellicose but well-meaning husband of a beautiful and depressed woman (Carole Laure) who wants to be pregnant but isn't. Hubby's solution to her woes is to talk another man (Dewaere), a complete stranger, into becoming her lover. When that fails to lift her spirits and fill her womb, the two men--both of them now slavishly devoted to the cult of her misery--bring in a boy (Riton) with whom Laure's character seems to be in perfect emotional synch. As with many of Blier's films, Handkerchiefs is an intellectually brutal but slaphappy variation on traditional comedies of manners. What makes this film a bit different was its obvious jibe at frothier French sex farces of the day (Yves Robert's Pardon Mon Affaire, for example, was released the same year) as well as then-contemporary adult comedy-dramas from the U.S. about the vicissitudes of relationships (Blume in Love, Kramer vs. Kramer). Seen in that context, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs looks like a wolf in sheep's clothing, though it isn't necessary to bring any context to Blier's acid wit. --Tom Keogh

Going Places [Region 2]

Beau-Pere

Buffet Froid/Return of Martin

Playing murder as farce is nothing new for French filmmakers, but Bertrand Blier brings the concept to a new level in Buffet Froid, a bleak, ironic black comedy. An unemployed man is enmeshed in a nightmarish situation that plays itself out with unapologetic illogic: he falls in with shady characters like his wife's killer, a corrupt police chief, and a young beauty who is definitely not what she seems. Like all Blier romps (most notably the scatological Going Places and Ménage), Buffet Froid is definitely not for everyone, and Gérard Depardieu fans might feel especially cheated by his passive performance. But if your own taste runs to the surrealistic dreamscapes of Luis Buñuel's final films, then Blier's cheerfully amoral tale is worth seeing. --Kevin Filipski