Bertrand Blier

Biography: life and films

Bertrand Blier is the one great iconclast of post-May 68 French cinema. A one-man revolutionary, equipped with the deadliest weapon known to man (the pen), he has spent most of his career fulminating over the hypocrisies of polite bourgeois society, particularly attitudes towards sex and the delusion that is female emancipation. Blier's cinema is a reaction to the so-called era of permissiveness, the optimistically named sexual revolution which was supposed to have ushered in a new era of enlightenment but which in fact merely reinforced the old middle-class double standards and made it even easier for women to be treated as sex objects. Greatly, influenced by the cinema of Luis Buñuel, Blier often resorts to symbolism and surrealism to make his point, and he is not adverse to using shock tactics if this will help his thesis. That most of his films have been popular with critics and audiences is a testament to both the essential truths they contain and Blier's own particular genius for filmmaking. Blier was not only an auteur, he was an auteur who was way ahead of his time, one of French cinema's greatest agents provocateurs.

Bertrand Blier was born on 14th March 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, a populous suburb of Paris. His father was the distinguished French actor Bernard Blier, who was in the film business for over fifty years and got to appear in some of his son's films towards the end of his career. Bertrand had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps but was, from an early age, fascinated by the process of filmmaking. Having barely turned twenty, he found his first job as an assistant director, on John Berry's Oh! que mambo (1959), and he then worked in the same capacity on Georges Lautner's Le Monocle noir (1961) and Antonio Margheriti's La Vierge de Nuremberg (1963).

A short while later, Bertrand Blier made his directing debut with Hitler, connais pas (1963), a documentary which won him the Silver Sail at the 1963 Locarno International Film Festival. He was then able to direct his father Bernard in his first full-length film, the psychological thriller Si j'étais un espion (1967). It would be seven years before Blier would direct his next film, Les Valseuses (a.ka. Going Places) (1974), the film that effectively launched his filmmaking career. In between, he occupied himself as a writer - he published some novels and worked on the screenplay for Georges Lautner's comedy Laisse aller, c'est une valse (1971).

Les Valseuses was a phenomenal success, and arguably the most daring French film of the 1970s. In France, it attracted an audience of almost six million and established Bertrand Blier's credentials as a serious auteur filmmaker. The film brought together two dynamic young actors who would come to dominate French cinema for the rest of the decade - Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. It also introduced two talented young actresses who would soon become household names in France - Miou-Miou and Isabelle Huppert. A mix of road movie, social satire and sex comedy, Les Valseuses is a full-frontal assault on bourgeois morality, an intensely provocative film and yet one that was very much in tune with the mood of its time. Anti-establishment sentiment was as rife in France in the mid-1970s as it was elsewhere in the western world, and for those who had had their fill of capitalist imperialism, Les Valseuses came as a breath of fresh air, if not a full-blown rallying cry for individualism and personal freedom. Even by today's standards, it is remarkable how liberated and liberating the film is.

Blier's next film, Calmos (1976), was far less radical and consequently failed to make anything like the impact of what had preceded it. An exuberant sex comedy with an impressive cast line-up (Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jean Rochefort, Bernard Blier and Brigitte Fossey), the film is amusingly risqué, but it is far less subversive than Blier's subsequent work, and therefore easy to overlook. Indeed it was somewhat overshadowed by Blier's next film, Préparez vos mouchoirs (1978) which proved to be another box office smash, particularly in the United States, where it took that most coveted of prizes, the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film (at the 1979 Oscars). The film, a subtle but quite profound reversal of the conventional romantic comedy, reunited Depardieu and Dewaere and is one of Blier's most accessible and likeable offerings.

Buffet froid (1979), by contrast, was a step into far less familiar territory, an acerbic black comedy that is more concerned with existential themes than Blier's usual preoccupations with class and sex. The director's father, Bernard Blier, forms an unforgettable triumvirate of despair with Depardieu and Jean Carmet in what is essentially a bleak poem on the randomness of life and the futility of existence. This was followed by one of Blier's most controversial films, Beau-père (1981), in which the writer-director breeches the twin taboos of incest and paedophilia, not in a sensationalist, exploitative manner (as some filmmakers had previously done), but in a way that is far more subtle and disturbing, The film is one of Blier's least stylised and is among his best, partly on account of the stunning performances from his lead actors Patrick Dewaere and Ariel Besse. So controversial is the film's subject matter that it could only have been made in France in the early 1980s.

Blier's run of box office successes continued with La Femme de mon pote (1983), a surprisingly conventional romantic comedy whose main attraction is the improbable pairing of Isabelle Huppert and Coluche. After this tame crowdpleaser came Tenue de soirée, Blier's second most successful film and arguably his most uninhibited comedy. Featuring Gérard Depardieu, Michel Blanc and Miou-Miou in the weirdest of ménage-à-trois relationships, the film boldly challenges contemporary attitudes towards homosexuality whilst exposing the way in which society continues to devalue and abuse women. The film is as funny as it is daring and covers, in a more palatable form, ground which Blier would revisit again and again in his subsequent films.

Notre histoire (1984) at first appears to be a French rom-com like any other, but it soon turns out to be something very different and ends with a superb twist. The film features Alain Delon in an unconventional lead role, at a time when the actor's popularity was very much on the wane. Delon's portrayal of a solitary alcoholic who is redeemed by an unlikely romantic adventure is one of the actor's finest and he was justly rewarded with a Best Actor César (the only one he received in his career). The film serves as yet another attack on bourgeois conventions, but a far more subtle one than is typical of Blier, which could explain why it was only a marginal success.

Trop belle pour toi (1989) was to be Blier's most critically acclaimed film, and also one of his most commercially successful. Not only did it win Blier three Césars (for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay), it also took the Jury Grand Prize at Cannes. Gérard Depardieu once again finds himself in a ménage-à-trois situation, this time torn between Josiane Balasko and Carole Bouquet, in what is Blier's most virulent attack on bourgeois double standards and the role of women in society, specifically the way in which women are expected to subjugate themselves to satisfy the needs of the dominant male. With its surreal touches and seamless merging of fantasy and reality, the film is one of Blier's most fascinating and unsettling, one that is rendered exquisitely poignant by Balasko's extraordinary performance.

Merci la vie (1991) is a far more challenging film in which Blier examines sexual neuroses in a way that would probably flummox even Sigmund Freud. Lacking the coherence of the director's previous work, and looking like a chaotically strung together assortment of half-baked flights of fancy, the film divided the critics but still managed to attract over a million spectators in France. Blier's next film, Un, deux, trois, soleil (1993), was far less successful and marked a sudden decline in the director's popularity with audiences and critics. A languid meditation on desire and personal fulfilment, the film is attractively shot but feels lacking in substance, although it does offer a notable appearance by Italian heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni. Blier again courted controversy with his next film, Mon homme (1996). The film's portrayal of a young woman (Anouk Grinberg) who seemingly enjoys being dominated and brutalised by men was ill-received and led the director to be branded as misogynistic. Even though Blier's intention is honourable (i.e. to remind us that society still expects women to be subservient to the male sex), the film blurs the issues somewhat and its portrayal of sadomasochistic submission is far from comfortable to watch.

On a much lighter note, Les Acteurs (2000) is Blier's cruel satire on the world of show business. The film brings together some of the biggest names in French cinema (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Pierre Arditi, Alain Delon, André Dussollier (bis), Michel Piccoli, etc.) and has a great deal of fun at their expense. Whilst the film is an enjoyable romp, it is structurally a mess and far too self-indulgent to be taken seriously. Again, the film was not a great success, although it was a positive triumph compared with what came next. Les Côtelettes (2003) was to be Blier's most spectacular flop, a lacklustre minimalist comedy in which two disillusioned old men (Philippe Noiret and Michel Bouquet) have their dormant libido reawakened by their attractive Arab house cleaner. It is almost as dire as it sounds.

Combien tu m'aimes? (2005) similarly explores the problems of illicit desire, but with somewhat more panache and imagination. The plot may be confused and a little too ridiculous, but the electricity that is generated from Monica Bellucci and Bernard Campan's on-screen rencontre just about saves the film. Le Bruit des glaçons (2010), Blier's most recent film, takes an even greater leap into the realm of the absurd, for what is essentially just a black comedy on mortality. Jean Dujardin wakes up one morning and receives a house call from the cancerous disease that will one day kill him, nicely dressed up in the form of Albert Dupontel. Blier's penchant for acerbic dialogue is superbly brought out by both actors, and whilst the film struggles to match up to the quality of the director's previous achievements, it is an enjoyable piece of nonsense, and a fairly effective satire on contemporary society's reluctance to engage with the last great taboos, death and terminal illness.

Filmography

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