Bertrand Blier

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#26 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 09, 2022 9:06 pm

tojoed wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:15 pm
TWBB, I'd very much like to hear your take on "Mon Homme", if you get the chance.
I thought this was an uneven work overall, but one where the present strengths were riskier and more thought-provoking than most of Blier's oeuvre. On one hand, the film is a fascinating exercise in exploring the enigmatic nature of desired power dynamics in sexual relationships, with a lot of respect to the BDSM community. Anouk Grinberg is sensational as a prostitute who enjoys her work for seemingly-paradoxical but perfectly congruous reasons, in a) giving pleasure to men in a submissive way that cultivates a rare nonmaterial reciprocity in self-actualization around identity needs, rather than for the material gains of money, and b) more idiosyncratically, how she, as a 'dirty' woman of the streets, can take a gently dominant role in contractual exchanges with 'normal' socioeconomically-secure men, serving as a guiding key to fulfill their dreams before taking on that subservient role. She then meets a homeless man, dirtier and superficially 'lesser' compared to her 'lowly' status, and in caring for him she immediately falls in love and looks to cast him into an extremely dominant position and be entirely submissive to his will. The way this plays out is both absurdist in the agility of the manner the relationship takes shape, and incredibly realistic to how one's sexual preferences around roles, in accessing freedom from either power or containment, formulate based on extremes in dissonant qualifiers. The humiliation she seeks is so clearly aimed at affection, as he unlocks a melding of her gently-dominant part -aimed at guiding men into new experiences- and her preferably-submissive positioning as a partner being contained safely and supportively by a more dominant, controlling and loving figure.

Perhaps less progressively fastened in step with a sadomasochism community is Blier's subsequent focus on the perverse assumption that these power dynamics are gendered in nature. The satire isn't mean-spirited, but rather unconditionally supports liberation of one's desires if social constructs that bar engagement with those parts are stripped away. Blier uses the idea that all women have a submissive part of them that wants to be sexualized and valued as such (in a heteronormative world) to makes his point, and in doing so irreverently gifts the women in the film with the freedom to achieve a deeper level of intimacy with themselves and others. I think there's something potently honest about Blier's broad ethos here- even if it doesn't necessarily pertain equitably to a similar fetish across the board. Metaphorically, we all have aspects of our inner core that cannot be explained away nor should they be, and just 'are', and the playful nature of social dynamics- themselves built upon mistrust and unknowability- when traversed by leaning into the exciting and frightening actions of initiated trust toward cultivating shared knowledge, can ascend these barriers and give way to cavernous harmony. Does Grinberg fall for Lanvin with such immediacy because of some magical energy, or because his lowly status makes this obstacle of giving oneself onto another more transparent, an affinity of circumstances and needs more communal? This doesn't affect the power she allots him, but it does affect the smoothness by which she can lower her defenses to do so- in a way she has not been able to do, yet has desperately wanted to, with every suitor she's seen, maybe ever.

The film would be interesting enough if it kept its attention on the women, but I appreciated how Blier explored Lanvin's complex characterization as a representation of men processing their own internal states around an expected position of "dominance." Lanvin is torn between actualizing his split 'masculine' parts of uninhibited aggression -or the desire to be in command and own another person as their submissive- and the tenderness (seemingly) incongruous with such a rigidly dominant state. The film's thorough exploration is conscientious to these relationships in BDSM groups because finding this balance is complicated, nebulous, and challenging to figure out solitarily, let alone collectively around shared needs, which is necessary for it to 'work' at all for the goal of mutual satisfaction. There seems to be a presence of 'switching' as a necessary function in all of these developments; of the submissive having a dominant say in their role, and vice versa. I love how Blier doesn't attempt to overstate any theories but allows the material to remain fluidly in the service of any 'normal' rom-com's (and real life relationship's) messy adventure towards romance. The Barry White populating the soundtrack, always the music of choice for the characters, signals the intent behind all of this exploration: These characters want the others to feel good, in part because their submissive/dominant counterparts make them feel good. Conscientious, empathetic, and service-oriented social behavior spawns reciprocal behavior. It's an incredibly mature film that pares back its heady ideas to pitch a very Bogdanovich-y optimism toward the essence of psychosexual desire in a social environment.

Ultimately the narrative takes a frustrating detour away from the central pairing that made the content so rich, spilling into a lazy and slim story at odds with the finely-detailed first half. It's so weakly-formed that I'm not even sure what to make of it, but there's an unearned growth orbiting Grinberg's life following a wild jump to a new man. This move leads to a firmly-sewn explanation of what the movie is 'about' in basic terms, though it doesn't need Grinberg's arc to hammer the audience into submission (ah) over its spell. It's a film about needing and being needed, and all the murky sludge coating treasures under the iceberg of that surface-level declaration; but it's Lanvin's third-act ignition, pairing with the woman who waits for released prisoners, that gives such pronouncement to miniscule encounters between strangers finding the beginning fibers of that dynamic to string together. Their brief time together speaks volumes to the esoteric power in the energy between two people, weighing the absurdity with the naked truth within the absurdism together as one. Masochism and love unite on levels that are universally understood through the grammar of cinema and genre schemas.

The final apology to "women" is confounding: Does it negate all we've seen that brings people together, working in favor of a validation for the difficulty in connecting and sustaining a connection of trust, one that is so vulnerable with so much at stake, that when broken demands a life change? Or is it Blier apologizing to women who see his filmography as demeaning when he's really been intending to celebrate their sex above men all along? Is he apologizing for this film, sincerely, cheekily, or a bit of both? I'm compelled to opt for a reading that extrapolates Lanvin's dithering duality of impulses and intent, related to his needs involving intimate socialization with women, onto Blier's own stance in his films. He doesn't know exactly why he has crafted the outlook of behaviors he has, just as Lanvin is tormented and confused himself, but at least he's tried to be authentic to what his internal drives creatively produce. The apology works as an admission that art, when whittled down to a theory, can be weaponized. Blier has never attempted to analyze his own work, allowing the indistinct signifiers to exist independently, but those still have consequences.

I don't know. Maybe he's just being masochistic himself in a final denouement, ready to take his punishment with glee for whatever one wants to punish him for. Maybe it's Lanvin's (or "men's") turn to be submissive, and maybe that's a part of him that's wanted to be liberated from this burden of dominating all along. In that sense, maybe this masochism is actually an empowerment for men to become liberated like the women were, and Blier is just reinforcing claims of misogyny. It's probably all and none of these things and more and less, because Blier doesn't explain his work, doesn't understand himself the blurry lines that drive us or his art, and just puts it out there. Sure is fun to think about, feel for, and engage with, though.

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#27 Post by domino harvey » Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:00 pm

Did not discover until the end credits that Blier gave Michel Blanc the story idea for his film, Grosse fatigue (1994), but the thought had already occurred to me more than once that Blanc clearly took some notes from his work with Blier. This movie takes self-deprecation into the realm of masochism as Blanc presents us with an unrepentantly unpleasant version of himself-- within the first ten minutes alone, Blanc charges his room service to Gerard Depardieu, judges a breast contest at a strip club, tries to rape Mathilda May (reasoning "You're Mathilda May!"), and does the same to Charlotte Gainsbourg before stealing from her purse. As you can tell, there are a lot of cameos here, and the two best as saved for the end and I would strongly urge no one watching to spoil them beforehand by looking at a cast list. But as enjoyable as the first act is, this kind of in-jokey inside baseball movie industry farce seems unsustainable at feature length. However, as the joke starts to wear a bit thin, the very odd high concept comes in, which I'd also never spoil, except to say it takes no stretch to see Blier's fingerprints in it and it finally explains how Gerard Depardieu made so many movies in the early 90s!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#28 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jun 21, 2022 7:51 pm

Looking up Grosse fatigue, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Blanc actually won Best Screenplay at Cannes for the film-- the same year Pulp Fiction won the top prize and Clint Eastwood headed the jury! Surprisingly Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve were the only actors on the jury, so I guess it had support beyond the most obvious branch that would get a kick out of the high concept

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#29 Post by swo17 » Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:18 am

Grosse fatigue was hilarious. Does the Gaumont Blu-ray have English subtitles like Amazon suggests? Unfortunately even the cover of that release spoils one of the "cameos" I think you're referencing, because that person happens to have third billing!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#30 Post by tenia » Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:29 pm

I can confirm the Gaumont BD release of Grosse fatigue has English subs on the main feature.

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#31 Post by swo17 » Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:50 pm

Sweet, thanks!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#32 Post by L.A. » Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:33 pm

swo17 wrote:
Thu Jun 23, 2022 1:18 am
Grosse fatigue was hilarious. Does the Gaumont Blu-ray have English subtitles like Amazon suggests? Unfortunately even the cover of that release spoils one of the "cameos" I think you're referencing, because that person happens to have third billing!
Haven’t used my 10€ off coupon at Amazon.fr (valid June 30th), guess I’ll take this and La Femme rêvée (1929) at least.

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#33 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:45 pm

I watched it last night, and it is indeed very funny and intelligent. I love how the film obfuscates its central conceit to the audience and its protagonist/writer/director in equitable measures, which we don't realize until a certain point. In that respect, it's like a Charlie Kaufman movie (especially his last one) in expressing his doubts and confusions over the material of his own life externalized into the medium's grammar.

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#34 Post by domino harvey » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:51 pm

Image

Learning that Combien tu m'aimes? is not a well-regarded film in Blier's filmography is comforting, as it means I haven't fully mellowed with age and am still naturally drawn most strongly to films that leave others indifferent or worse. Because this is easily the best Blier film I've seen yet, and in its way the most coherent in terms of the through-line of tethering his gimmicks to a cogent meaning. Monica Bellucci stars in what is, in summation, ninety minutes of people trying to cope with how hott she is. That Blier somehow made a successful movie out of what is truly my least favorite movie trope ("Whore likes guy so much she gives it away for free") is praise enough, but of course the film is filled with his requisite oddball detours and unpredictable right-turns as he explores conventional ideas of romance and fantasy and relationships (navigating insecurity around your partner's body count, introducing your new partner to your social circle, the incomprehensibility of getting what you desired, &c) made strange by the funhouse mirror reflections offered here.

I don't want to keep kicking the dead dog of Quentin Dupieux's never-ending love letters to a director he'll never be one-tenth as talented as, but this is the film that finally let me see Blier as a spiritual successor to Bunuel-- not in direct homage (there are none, at least not here) or because "something something surrealism" but because the film solidifies an internal oddball logic and idiosyncratic approach to satire into something that for once doesn't keep the majority of cards close to its chest. Make no mistake, there are still strange aspects of this I have no confident capacity to explain, but I went with it because it mostly does add up and for those parts that don't, there is a degree of confidence at work here that can't be faked like a loud, neighbor-annoying orgasm. Blier has certainly built enough of his own filmic CV of askance flights of fancy that he's his own brand without needing to mention Bunuel at all, and perhaps that's why he wears the comparison best. Combien tu m'aimes? is the first of the eight I've seen from Blier that pushed me into seeing him as more than just a puckish agitator and goof without fully realized ambitions. I mean, he's still mostly that, but now he's also the guy who finally made a great movie I can recommend without reservations... but don't worry, I'm sure you'll all hate it!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#35 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:05 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:51 pm
Combien tu m'aimes? is the first of the eight I've seen from Blier that pushed me into seeing him as more than just a puckish agitator and goof without fully realized ambitions.
I mostly liked Combien tu m'aimes? but not nearly as much as you. I can appreciate the value in a clearer projection compared to his denser and more chaotic absurdist works, but I think Blier has fully realised his ambitions before on several occasions- though usually as a cumulative a-ha revelation rather than a toned-down transparent idea that takes the time to check in with you as an audience member at various points throughout its unveiling. I prefer him in a mode where you need to acclimate to an array of seemingly-discordant information, and dig into what is vaguely implicit in such a warped cocktail of irreverent behavior, to arrive at a percolating sobriety of these ambitions: Whether it's in reflexively dissecting the masochistic urges and behaviors of people with and without power (Mon Homme); the role of physical attraction as something we hopelessly want to reject -based on an impotence to control our relationship to attaining it, categorized superficiality, etc.- but simply cannot outside of movies (Trop belle pour toi); in how emotional experiences that bruise the ego don't discriminate even against the most antisocial aggressors, and may even prompt self-betterment to the undeserved (Les Valseuses); or Buffet froid's perfect demonstration of how we'll overlook preposterous behavior, not because we're desensitized and on the road to becoming numb sociopaths ourselves, but because we crave belongingness to some (any, please!) sense of logic, so desperately that we're willing to subjectively adjust ourselves to the senseless and pivot from there for as long as it takes, as long as we're not alone.

Combien tu m'aimes? didn't even feel fully realised to me, and the only way I can really distinguish it from the others is actually in the opposite direction as you: by stripping away a lot of Blier's typical obfuscating muck (which reflexively mimics our and the character's struggles to grasp the experiences they yearn for) and going part-way, this film serves as proof that Blier's prior provocations yielded more concrete revelations or ethea in contrast. For a while, Combien tu m'aimes? presented with a more concentrated playfulness in measuring out how much we're individually motivated by lust, money, love, jealousy, or an absence of the ideal, where no party truly 'knows' the answer for themselves. I found that piece an interesting and accurate bit of social psychology and rich material for a central conceit, but I didn't think Blier explored it thoroughly, even when operating with a more cyclically repetitive engagement with his themes. Choices like introducing narrative arcs with characters like Depardieu's pimp obstructed opportunities to flesh out these notions with what felt like a new strategy of subtraction up until that point, while the inclusion of the neighbor graciously contributed to its aims - in addition to providing a device for the most humorous bits. But in the end I thought the film was surprisingly safe in how it basked in uncharacteristically shallow water for Blier, who took his ideas further in other works, and didn't earn the cumulative payoff either. I enjoyed the punchline: the heart's transformation to feeling stable at the end links self-actualization in a relationship with exposure to realizing your partner is just as confused and flawed as you are, but again, I feel like arriving at that firm reading of a cheeky denouement is reaching without as much context as Blier dispenses in his most blurred concoctions.

It probably sounds like I didn't like it, but I really did! Blier's engagement with this kind of film's simmering whimsy by matching it with his own brand, that tends to lean into the capricious side of whimsicality, was smart and well-done. I'm just struggling to see where this film became "fully-realized" against his other works- but I'm probably missing something that could more specifically detail such an argument

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#36 Post by domino harvey » Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:28 pm

Interesting thoughts. Our Venn diagrams of seen Blier films are not as overlapping as one might expect, so it's possible I will get the same response from some of his other films that came before this one chronologically, but for me this was the first Blier movie I've seen (and keep in mind I've enjoyed many of his films despite this tendency) that resisted something I've highlighted before with Blier: his desire to not be fully understood or comprehended. There's always an intentional crypticism to his films, where he removes a key component or counters an easier reading, seemingly just for kicks or to evade a reductive critical reading. Here he does that again (and I don't think the film lacks any of his bizarre detours, such as the overexposed sequences, or Bellucci's randomly changing wardrobe, or the collection of groups of people borrowed but bettered from Notre histoire, or the intrusion of a Tuscan life in the finale, or or or...) but I think the enjoyable distractions for once don't detract from the film having a coherent follow-through that feels more intuitive than his other attempts at obfuscation. Perhaps because love and lust are often so removed from conventional logic that any invading absurdities feel of a piece with the more conventional narrative thrusts?

On a side note, how is there not a GIF out there of Depardieu dancing with his gun at the party?

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#37 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:59 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:28 pm
Perhaps because love and lust are often so removed from conventional logic that any invading absurdities feel of a piece with the more conventional narrative thrusts?
That's a very good point, though I think I'd qualify it further as a *commonly experienced and talked/thought-about* feeling in measuring its success. Mon Homme's incitation of dominant and submissive desires in relationships, Trop belle pour toi's targeting of our own shame when engaging with conflicting markers of attractiveness, and Buffet froid's meditation on the elusive pains of thwarted belongingness are all completely removed from conventional logic, impossible to be cognitively explained away, but they're deeply uncomfortable topics often kept anxiously locked in our private spheres. I think out of those three, only Buffet froid really obfuscates its purpose, but Combien tu m'aimes? more directly deals with love and lust, not only as universally acknowledged, comfortable topics, but communicated in a recognizably constructed form modeling the artificiality of a rom-com genre. It's a pretty intelligent maneuver: Blier making a Blier film about and via familiar designs, to coerce us into digesting something strange and slightly uncomfortable with the allure of digestible signifiers we've already consented to ingesting many times over! He's done this before, but usually pivots a few times with bold narrative arc-switches that threaten to make us forget the earlier setups, with glaring shocks that consume our attention spans toward wherever he points his finger on the spinning globe of puckish provocations. I actually think his films are more deliberately creative and planned around a throughline than that, but they can 'feel' like he's blinding pointing to a new idea and uprooting us without warning, so staying within a grounded storyline (well, comparatively!) concerned with a tangible topic we can and are willing to sit with for 90 minutes is destined to work better as a cohesive product. I can connect the dots and recall how this film moved from beginning to middle to end, which I can't fairly claim for his other works that messily bleed from set piece to set piece or unpredictable device to unpredictable device, and so I can see why this would be the one to confidently recommend to one's social network regardless of their capacity to endure "difficult" absurdist art

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#38 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:29 am

Les acteurs is a 100 minute Jimmy Kimmel Oscar skit where the fun is mostly being amazed at who Blier got to show up for a rather pointless and indulgent comedy about actors playing themselves that has precious few laughs and ends with an appeal to sincerity and emotion that it does not earn. The hit (Josiane Balasko replaces Andre Dussollier playing himself as an enormous asshole after he walks out of the film) to miss (Pierre Arditi tells Michael Lonsdale he's now "a fag" and in a relationship with Jean-Claude Brialy, who "fucks [him] up the ass" -- are you laughing yet?) ratio is rough on this one. I did like that at about the point I had about given up on the film's indulgences and head-up-its-own-assery, the movie meets me half-way and moves away from actors being seen (by themselves, mostly) as important people by having Sami Frey maniacally steal a wheelchair from someone without legs and then roll himself back and forth in it across the Champs-Élysées while making faces like he's mentally retarded... but I should note this happens like 20 minutes in and there's still a lot more movie to go. This is a film like the Player (which I like about as much as this, which is to say not much) where if you don't already know a lot about the actors trotting themselves out, you're going to get even less than the already meager offerings (An easy test: Do you know what affect Claude Rich is best known for? If not, or you had to Google who Claude Rich even is, you're not the audience for this). I can sort of admire how hostile this film is to any viewer that paid to see it (literally-- several actors poll average joes coming up an escalator on what they thought of Patrick Dewaere until they find one with a negative opinion so that Jean-Pierre Marielle can push him head-first into an electric fan as a surrogate murder against all audiences), but I assure you that none of this is as amusing as it sounds in practice.

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#39 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:02 pm

Completely agree on Les acteurs as an uninteresting failure. I thought the recurring joke about Claude Rich's demeanor worked better than it could have, and Jacques Villeret was more consistently funny than I anticipated (at least for a couple scenes), but otherwise I didn't get much out of this. I don't think you have to 'get' a lot of the French references in order to appreciate the broad antisocial comedy in a vacuum, but I also didn't think the humor was effectively conveyed. Perhaps Blier's ambitions to merge the kind of comedy he excels in with specific meta-jokes split his attentional resources and left each side in half-measured form? It's unlike him to fail so hard with this sort of material, but I suppose when you swing and miss with such loudly perverse gags, the defeat is going to really stand out

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#40 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:06 pm

I have to admit I had one good chuckle at myself during Delon’s segment when
SpoilerShow
we open with a shot of chairs for Gabin and Lino Ventura and I had to do mental math to confirm they couldn’t possibly be about to appear given the release date, since everyone else is here!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:01 pm

Beau-père is a unidimensional concept stretched way too thin, essentially remaking Kubrick's version of Lolita without a sarcastic edge. It's been a very long time since I saw my first Blier, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, but I recall him already effectively tackled the confrontational statutory rape romantic angle in that film's third act, only with reverse genders and keeping it to an offshoot segment rather than tent-poling a feature with the scheme. Turns out that was probably the right call, as revolving an entire two hour narrative around this idea results in a frustratingly static final product. To his credit, Blier creates opportunities to separate his examination from Kubrick's more clinical film or Nabokov's ironic solipsism by pitching the dynamic with sincerity, but he unfortunately does little with them. At least that's what it seems for quite a while.

I expected Blier to weaponize his objectively-observed deadpan absurdity to more aggressively explore how higher functions of morality are forfeited in favor of primal drives- offering a perverse reading that these urges of id are our higher functions! I actually think he is presenting this to the table, but his ambitions are filtered through a softer, gentler intervention, one that requires a longer runtime to arrive at its disconcerting thesis- and that, per usual, mirrors his protagonist's demeanor/psychology. Patrick Dewaere is hyper-sensitive, a gentleman who is cognizant of his moral instincts, while Ariel Besse's self-actualized commitment to realising her natural feelings posits that naivete works in the opposite direction than we think: Developmental maturity decreases with age as narrow-mindedness advances and peripheries close. Blier seems to be planting the idea that our barriers to accessing our True Selves are learned through inorganic influences of moral conditioning, obstructing organically intimate connections. I think it's Blier's intention to approach taboo categorization from a place of empathy that starts with manipulating the vehicle who usually holds power (the older, more 'mature' male) into a deeply empathetic, moral person, traumatized by his urges' incongruity with one another. There's a lot of deceptive optimism in seeing mankind as having evolved into an intuitive class of moralists- though Blier goes one further and shatters that reading by irreverently diagnosing these moral impulses as fatalistic handicaps of myopic brainwashing, marking adults as irreparably devolved from a state that children freely embody. In this outlook, kids will always have the upper hand of wisdom against adults through not having gained the superfluous weight of moralism!

The final shot is fairly disturbing, though Blier's role as an intrusive provocateur doesn't gel with either the ethos of the film nor the tender strategy he's followed to get here, so its insertion feels inappropriate. The relentless close-ups on a brand-new menace-in-the-making transform the picture into a kind of horror tale where morally-informed men will always been threatened by underage girls, not because the men have problematic urges but because girls are more in touch with their confident desires and men won't be able to be fully satisfied either satiating those desires or repelling them. There's a decent movie somewhere in here that boldly uses these devices to empower the women as mature agents long before men catch up with their delayed maturity - taking the truthful pieces of positive stereotypes for comparatively advanced female psychological development and emphasizing them to uncomfortable heights. But by making a toddler a predator in the end, we inevitably fall back on pitying Dewaere's purgatory state on earth, and I'm not sure how I feel about that choice. Blier has already made movies that offer similar claims to cause us to question our own worldviews with greater success, so this seems like an unnecessarily stripped-down and warmhearted rehashing of superior and more vividly audacious work from the same canon

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#42 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 21, 2022 10:31 pm

Merci la vie may be Blier's masterpiece, and not just because he's kind-of making a Godardian Rivette film! Formally, I've never seen Blier in such a dense mode, so adventurous and in control of his experimental ambitions, wielding postmodern narrative fragmentation to profit intelligent and creative manifestations of emotion. He's deeply interested in how we manage our sensitivities with disarming defenses and surrendering releases in response to external stressors, but uncharacteristically sustains a surging empathy for all reactions, with little room for mockery. That doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of opportunities taken to playfully subvert the melodramatics (hello, Godard) but it probably helps that Blier is centering this story around two deceptively-thin but actually-rich female (yes, that's right) characters. As Blier propels Charlotte Gainsbourg and Anouk Grinberg into the roles he typically carves out for men, he shows a willingness to explore their psychosocial complexity with thoroughness and charity, and then upends those archetypes entirely before the first act is over.

Blier starts off playing with the many shades of desire as we experience an array of social and internal conflicts in (more or less) real time, the principals appropriately wavering back and forth between these incongruous drives: seeking parental/social security, but self-protecting from abuse: wanting intimacy with lovers and defaulting into traditional roles as a sexual submissive or dutiful child-bearer, but also empowering oneself to get out ahead of the traditionally dominant party to become the users; craving stability from a lover, but also cheekily stating a preference for trysts with unemployed men because they have more generous time to give to that sexual impulse! There's sincerity lended to the idea that men initiated the harm in this world, whether through Depardieu's evil doctor acting as a kind of approachable mad scientist, or Gainsbourg's molesting family member in an early scene returning home, or even the metaphysically invasive film crew that tries to control and diminish Grinberg's life as unreal and unimportant. But rather than issuing an imprudent reveal of universal kink in these women wanting this harm done to them (or something of that crude nature, a past stance emulated perhaps by the dismissive film crew!), Blier retains a pathos for them returning to their exploitation. Grinberg chases the doctor for answers and Gainsbourg prays to her father to come and save her. Is a later-version of her father her actual father.. a gentler version she needs to coerce into being dominant? Does she crave taking on that role, and also partially crave the oppressed role she is forced into during her sexual assault at the start? Ah, to have such competing parts constantly dominating and eroding one's sense of self!

Which leads into what this film is really 'about': the conflicting drives of emerging womanhood - navigating the developmental stage of relentless self-consciousness and confusion against the friction of a hostile patriarchal world - on the long road to self-actualization. The milieu they navigate, and the ensuing narrative strands that populate in segments there, reflect their own fears and desires, and the 'return to exploitation' might as well be synonymous with having no choice but to repeatedly turn back to face life itself, regardless of the beatdown. If that sounds like an enormous, obfuscating high concept.. well, it is. But Blier has fun with it by making their journey an actual road movie, a melodrama, and a fantasy to project their internal states onto the celluloid. Art Film qualities like changing color schemes and transitioning between visual approaches to style, without any internal logic or cues, complement a more lucid emphasis on Wizard of Oz' dark fairy tale aesthetic and structure to aid this reading, but just as much is indebted to Daisies and Celine and Julie Go Boating.

The back half tracks the girls taking control of their narratives to travel across time and drop into characters' lives, traverse historical landscapes in scenes out of classic cinema, occasionally kidnap members to go off on half-realised escapades and other times remain to confess the emotions they're desperate for another to receive. But even before that, there's lots of talk from both young women about how everyone is thinking or watching or dreaming about them, and their collective wishes to be important, empowered, and wanted reinforces adventures to fulfill those narcissistic prophecies, though these desires are often at odds with one another. Obviously, it's a Blier film, but it's also true of real life. None of this is portrayed with mean-spirited provocations the way Blier has done before via aggressive toxic masculinity. Instead, he uses stereotypically feminine relational skills to forge that more balanced empathy with the developmentally-appropriate state of self-absorption, crafting a fully-realised portrait of the natural benevolence to be a participant as a confident agent amongst others. Make no mistake: Blier and they see the world as an aggressive and alienating place, and their behavior resiliently adapts to those threats - though not without meditating on why it’s sad through the oscillation back to good will when it’s safe to express.

The emergence of STDs into the plot and the fear of AIDS in an offshoot, only semi-related revelation for the other character, threatens to destroy the fantasy, and Blier seems determined to allow his characters to temporarily evade reality and also earnestly ground them and us to it; unavoidably repressive and yet reassuringly emancipating. Each of Gainsbourg's parents offer wisdoms near the end that contribute to this spectrum of perspective, under a unified existential philosophy, representing her own movement towards anchored convictions. Her father laments that "the plot never revolves around me" before humbly arriving at "I'd be happy to just play a small part." Gainsbourg is soaking in this information, as a woman going through an inherently egotistical season of life, reckoning with the part of her that wants to accept a less burdensome existence in lieu of feeling like the center of the world, but who also senses such crushing forces closing in on her that she feels she must remain strong at the center to preserve her vulnerable 'self'. Her mother ends the film by iterating a more succinct and simple strain of optimistic insight with "Don't fret too much, life isn't all shit, it can be great" before giving them both permission to take a break from the incessant crises of conscience, and from the film itself. This is a great film validating the fear of irreparable temporal constraints moving us in only one direction, and also opening us up from that myopic fear into the possibilities that exist forward, including the invaluable bonds of camaraderie in sisterhood.

It’s also interesting that Blier can only be so charitable to female characters.. Is this itself a reflection of his own cynicism- that he can only conceive of allotting grace for the internal struggle of humanity and find good intentions in the sex he doesn’t understand the experience of, unable to do the same for men even with his imagination? Even the end credits sequence meditates on a suffering, stagnant male character immobilized, while the two women go off to cleanse themselves with revitalizing self-care!

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#43 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 22, 2022 4:00 am

Convoi exceptionnel is built around a promising idea, akin to The Truman Show if everyone was in on and accepting of the game, but it hardly even tries to take advantage of the limitless potential inherent in its high concept. However, when things 'are written', and characters can aimlessly wander and banter and pay attention to small banal details without the distraction of constructed anxieties in society like work, family, etc., there's a welcome transcendental aura to be found. In a sense, this is the logical final film for Blier, refurbishing Waiting For Godot into an absurdist meditation on life and death, set in a world that fundamentally rejects trivial markers of meaning or hiveminded philosophies of Truth we cling to in 'reality', because morality and all that jazz is determined by the script (and even there, characters shrug off the value of what they find with "improvisation"). Blier has spent his entire career looking for new ways to expose a grey way of seeing the world through inverting norms, including using 'life-as-a-movie' for reflexive benefits, and now he has created a Play of Life with a more pronounced internal logic to match his worldview: Ideas are fluid and ephemeral, but emotion and memory formulate subjective meaning as wholly personal and valid to these characters. What they do and what happens doesn't matter as much as who they are and what their honest experiences have been. Except, you know, it's all overtly melodramatic and the music cues are apparently diegetic despite appearing otherwise (the film's best moment comes from the male duo commenting on a sad character's theme and hoping it'll change under different conditions!)

Aside from a couple inspirational bits and a few brief instances where the overarching vibe of existential potency broadly clicks, this is a comedy graveyard mixed with unearned drama. I've come to realize that it's a very French thing to produce uneven cocktails of blending tones in a film like this, which isn't a 'knock' - in fact, like La Belle Époque, this one demands such a fusion, and I wish more American movies would take on what feels like a constitutional obligation to generate films that emulate the authentic mess of merging these moods together in everyday life. This one is just poorly executed and doesn't use its concise runtime to do anything with its ideas. I don't even know why the last fifteen minutes are there at all, but they are

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#44 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 22, 2022 9:15 pm

La Femme de mon pote is another disappointing Blier, weighed down to a snail's pace of pointless conceptualization due to an all-around-dull premise sans surrealistic inversion on a chosen hook. Unlike Beau-père, the off-brand gentleness isn't even worked around a perverse conceit, so there's hardly anything there to justify its existence, particularly as a 'Blier film'. However, the final scene does elicit some semblance of a twisted Blier-ism, supposing that in all relationship dynamics- be they platonic friendships or romances or love triangles- each individual is uniquely isolated from the others in a constant state of helpless social comparison and defensive impulses to secure a position of standing (Sartre's "Hell is other people" in action). Consequently, the organic procedure is for a friend to take an opportunity to not only bed but fall in love with his best friend's girlfriend when given an advantage, or for that girlfriend to play the men off each other and toy with their hearts because she's objectified and at a disadvantage, or for the womanizing friend to use women and move on rather than lock himself into a situation where he could get hurt- just as she does. People are just getting power where they can, and Huppert's smile is appropriately bittersweet as she eavesdrops on the admission that she could continue her own role in this cycle gives her purpose, dopamine firing, and yet overwhelmed with sadness that she is limited to this role just like all of us are: hopelessly alone in superficial, reactive relationships. Unfortunately, the entire movie up until that point is a vapid slog, without a shred of inspiration to earn that deeper reading

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#45 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 22, 2022 9:19 pm

I enjoyed Trop belle pour toi quite a bit, though like a lot of Blier films it runs out of steam near the end as it exhausts its ideas. That said, this has a big laugh out loud funny smash cut to the end credits, so I guess it pulled it together at the last moment! Interesting continuation of the auto-storytelling of Notre histoire into more emotional usages here, but it does have a bit of the feel of being done already by Blier. Carole Bouquet is excellent as the wife weighted down by the expectations and duties of her beauty. Balasko is unrecognizable in demeanor from the more boisterous comic roles she's often associated with. Not really sure what Cluzet is doing here with his line deliveries, other than that I'm certain he was told to do so by Blier for some reason. Depardieu is dependable, as always. I dunno, I enjoyed this a lot but I don't think there's as much to grab hold of in it compared to some of his other works, even those I liked less than this

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#46 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Nov 22, 2022 9:58 pm

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
Sat Feb 12, 2022 11:50 am
I would leave Le bruit des glaçons till last or better still on the shelf.

Despite being a fan of Blier and Dupont -almost to the degree of being an apologist for Dupont even at his most raucous - I found this one a total dud. What there is of absurdism is jettisoned as soon as pen hit paper and a potential high concept idea fluttered to the ground. I was hoping that it would reach the same sort of robustiousness of something like Sleuth for example but it fell tragically short and not even Chemotherapy could have injected any life into it.
I don't know if it's just because I've been on a run of dry Bliers that did virtually nothing with their high concepts, but I thought Le bruit des glaçons was pretty great! While I can't argue with domino that it may have been served better as a short, the film's central conceit still justifies its runtime because unlike other seemingly one-note Bliers, it's evading the trap of statically recycling the ideas from its jump-off point. Sure, the physical manifestation of cancer coming into play may have limited range if operating only as a grim reaper vehicle with an edge of personified nuisance in entitlement and other antisocial behavior, but instead Blier casts Dupontel into a role that doubles as a guardian angel type figure, propelling a Bishop's Wife / It's a Wonderful Life narrative of existential epiphany. He's not only here to taunt Dujardin (though he does do plenty of that, to varying degrees of effectiveness), but to humble him to a place of growth and gratitude with the time he has left.

I interpreted this film to be about how, when one is suffering, they are stuck in a situation that cannot be supported by outside parties -since those people are constitutionally incapable of comprehending what we're going through- and thus must craft an intimate relationship with other parts of themselves to get by. If someone has cancer, that part will reflect their fears, insecurities, negative core beliefs, regrets, goals, and values in the face of acute crisis. Dujardin becomes better off and begins to live again as a result of the gift of desperation from this cancerous visit, engaging with the incarnation of his illness, not just as the illness itself representing death but as the only part of him that will listen, intrinsically understand his pain, and who can cast that back to him in a manner that promotes spiritual development; motivating acceptance and maturity. It's only through this active threat, mirroring rock bottom and bludgeoning him over the head with sobriety to it, that Dujardin can disarm his myopic defenses and access the corporeal love interest in his vicinity who truly cares for him and can make life worth living. It's basically a thoroughly-explored optimistic antidote to La Femme de mon pote's cynical denouement!

I don't know, I thought this was surprisingly deep and warranted its comedy-drama hybrid; unlike Blier's latest film, which tried to do something similar without any attention to character or embodying skills in forging these tones together. Le bruit des glaçons executed this merger seamlessly, and even if it loses steam in its back half and becomes kind of a mess, well, how can a film like this sustain itself authentically any other way? Shouldn't it get increasingly crowded and confounding, with more externalizations manically inserting themselves to sway Dujardin into their grasp as he begins to 'earn' a second chance with personal growth? Doesn't it make sense for the Deathsayers to up their ante and try to take his newfound-potential partner down with him? I enjoyed the finale too- only in the movies can one cheat fate with such trickery, obviously composed with cheeky divulgence from Blier of his omniscient role of manipulator in order to make dreams come true! Can't blame the guy for giving us a prankish Tarantino ending, only irreverently whimsical and modest in scope

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#47 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Nov 23, 2022 4:09 pm

In many ways, Les Côtelettes is the relevant antecedent to Le bruit des glaçons. Both are essentially adapted stage plays (even if the latter was never published for theatre), with the former a faux-chamber piece that begins by establishing a twofer dynamic of a father and son trading sociopolitical jabs, before escaping into a surreal metaphysical adventure of forward (sideways?) momentum, where they encounter all sorts of wacky situations and characters, including incarnations of nonmaterial entities akin to the kind Blier would build his follow-up around. While at times too broad, what doesn't gel ultimately ceases to derail the trance of Blier's cumulative fever dream, as it unravels into something more effective for its surprises that stem from being repeatedly liberated of its supposed conceit. There's an appropriate internal logic to how unfocused Les Côtelettes is, as its loose, anti-structure mimics how these intergenerational conversations between people we have rich histories with (often family members, as depicted here) sloppily spill into seemingly unrelated subjects and judgments of people, switching from specific targets to vague rhetoric, spanning the depths of life all the way to death, until they become diluted and silly and confusing and we wonder what we're even talking about anymore and why. I admired how far Blier pushed this abstract non-concept as he ventures into irreparably obfuscated terrain, all the way to the intrusive genre change at the end, conjured by a particularly offensive act with wild implications for who's involved! It's one of the most splendidly perverse things I've seen from him, and -as opposed to Le bruit des glaçons's crowning moments- would never have worked if isolated in short form, since we need to acclimate to this film's insane wavelength for it to elevate beyond poor taste, which it somehow manages to do. Of course having Philippe Noiret on board doesn't hurt, as he steals the whole movie and gives hysterical readings on lines that may have earned dry laughs in another actor's hands

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#48 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:20 pm

Calmos issues an amusing twist on gendered expectations, but struggles to hit a stride due to its narrative design gravitating towards repetition and banality in sync with its protagonists. Two men (a pimp and a gynecologist) have grown averse to sex and crave zen through independence in rural makeshift women-free milieus. The film tracks them cyclically returning back to these spaces in desperate efforts to escape action with their wives - and, seemingly, the promise of ‘action’ that a film must deliver; hence all that infiltrates their faux-safe havens to coerce literal stimulation! The conceit is good, placing men in the position of reverse gender roles as they helplessly attempt to evade aggressive sexual comeons from women, to settle into a “calm” vapid existence of stereotypical housewives pre-feminist zeitgeist. Blier wisely doesn’t posit that the men's disinterest is in response to the feminist movement’s empowerment. He does, however, incorporate the rise of feminism into the far more clever subtext: where the encouragement of feminine agency, vocalization and collective mobilization only oppresses these men further, representing a matriarchal mirror image of historically male-directed macro and micro rape, which eventually takes the narrative to apocalyptic sci-fi territory. The movie can be uneven and sluggish and alienating at times, but usually that’s because half the characters are doing whatever is in their power -including tantruming or nonverbally disengaging from all stimulation the film provides- to be boring. That doesn’t make it a secretly-great film, nor does it excuse the lopsided pace, but Blier’s imbues enough rotating creative ideas to keep this one alive for most of its runtime. Though when the best part of your movie is a cold open with five minutes of silent deadpan humor in a gynecology office, it’s hard to give soaring marks, especially since by the end he’s trying so much harder to get a rise out of us best served with a ‘less is more’ approach in those opening frames. Or maybe the surreal ending (his most absurd request for an audience to 'go with'?) is the perfect bookend to such a muted start... nothing will stop these guys from their reptilian quest to isolate, or even stir them from their flat affects!

I think I've finished all available Bliers. I haven't written everything up, but I've tried to with the ones that prompted a thought or two. Notre Histoire was my last one and I thought it was okay. I admired the hasty snowballing inanity more than I enjoyed it, but my biggest takeaway was near the end when Blier inserted an in-joke referencing his previous film's basic premise. It was a curious bit of writing lazily shoved in there without taking an opportunity to spin a shred of wit into it, which sums the movie up pretty well I guess

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#49 Post by Stefan » Thu Nov 24, 2022 11:48 am

As a side note: This French news clip from july 1982 concerning the suicide of Patrick Dewaere has an, in my eyes, moving little interview with Blier on the very same day of the actors' death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEj2Ezx ... el=INAActu

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#50 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:23 pm

I liked Convoi exceptionnel a little more and Les côtelettes a little less than TWBB did, but both are very "Blier," not always to their benefit. I am discovering as I near the end of my available viewings anyways that watching a lot of Blier in close quarters is akin to the same problems I ran into trying to marathon classic-era Screwball Comedies. They're a bit too similar in tone and approach and start to run together as tics become more apparent. I think Convoi exceptionnel is also a verrryyyy familiar meta joke that Blier obfuscates from the obvious level Charlie Kaufman operates on into typical crypticism. As for Les côtelettes, this movie is as far as I'm concerned about one step away from total free association and virtually meaningless, but that isn't exactly a criticism, more just a statement of fact. Certainly of all the ways I expected it to end,
SpoilerShow
Noiret and Bouquet running train on Death while in the midst of a spontaneous dance number
was not one of them! Was not surprised to learn it was one of the worst received films to ever play in competition at Cannes, as one big question I had during it was "Who funded this? Who is the commercial audience for this?" I liked both of these films, but I don't think either adds any new tricks to Blier's repertoire-- though if Convoi exceptionnel ends up being his last film, it's fittingly of a piece with so many of his interests to be a fair summation of his career

Convoi exceptionnel is available to rent on Amazon as "Heavy Duty" if people without access to back channels want to play along with this thread

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