Calmos (1976)
Directed by Bertrand Blier

Film Review

Between Les Valseuses (1974) and Préparez vos mouchoirs (1978), the two films which earned him his international reputation, Bertrand Blier made a film which has been overlooked almost since the day it was released and which Blier himself dismissed as a dismal failure.  Calmos is Blier's most virulent riposte to the aggressive wave of feminism that swept through the 1970s like a social tsunami, an unbridled, no holds barred sex comedy which spans just about every popular genre, from road movie to sci-fi Dystopia, ending with a Terry Gilliam-like departure into Jonathan Swift territory.  It's Blier's most chaotic and strident film, boldly venturing into crevices that no other sex comedy had previously ventured, a surreal oddity that never quite fulfils its potential.  Whereas some of Blier's less successful films have enjoyed something of a reappraisal and are now considered an essential part of his canon, Calmos remains locked away in the bottom drawer, like a dirty novel no one wants to claim ownership for.

It's not as if the film doesn't have a great cast.  Calmos comes complete with one of the most remarkable ensembles of acting talent Blier was able to hire, with comedy heavyweights Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort leading the most fulsome rebellion against belligerent feminism.  Marielle and Rochefort's is a comedy double act made in Heaven, the two actors sparking off each other like oppositely charged electrodes that have been wired up to the National Grid.  Their scenes with Bernard Blier, the director's illustrious father, here supremely well-cast as a bon vivant priest, are by far the most enjoyable the film has to offer.  The sequence in which these three acting giants chastise an adolescent for giving into carnal desires is hilarious, just one of the weird Buñuellian digressions the film has to offer.  Brigitte Fossey is chosen by Blier to personify the dominant female - utterly desirable and yet also scarily intimidating as the ball buster from Hell.  What could be more disturbing for the male psyche? - an object of desire turned insatiable sexual predator.  Who would have thought that the same actress, looking scarily relaxed in her nude scenes, had once been known for her portrayal of perfect innocence, as the sweet little orphan girl in René Clément's Jeux interdits?

Although the film begins well, with one outrageous comedy set-piece segueing beautifully into the next, by the mid-point Blier's self-discipline and imagination have all but deserted him and total anarchy breaks out.  A drawn-out, full-frontal tussle between the sexes involving a tank rambling over the French countryside feels like something that has been lifted from an inferior comedy, and things do not improve as Blier strays awkwardly into sci-fi territory.  The penultimate sequence in which the male protagonists are literally reduced to sex machines on a production line serving the needs of now fully independent women ought to be funny but it isn't - it's just a crude gag that is extended way beyond the bounds of reason, let alone decency.

The vulgarity quotient is then raised a notch or two further for the film's grand finale, which looks like something the Monty Python team may have dreamed up on a bad day.  With its far from subtle Freudian symbolism, there are some easy schoolboy smirks to be extracted from the final sequence, in which the protagonists, now shrivelled up, wrinkled Lilliputians, stray into the interior sexual organs of a woman, but is this really what we expected from Blier?  Calmos is a true one-off, one of those unfortunate, misunderstood films that manages to be both brilliant and awful.  As a counter to the feminist onslaught of the 1970s it is pretty feeble, but as an expression of male insecurity in an era of burgeoning female emancipation it is both timely and revealing, and perhaps also darkly prescient...

Film Synopsis

Paul Dufour is a middle-aged doctor whose wife's conjugal demands on him are beginning to get him down.  One day he meets another man, Albert, who is in the same predicament.  On impulse, the two men take a train to a remote village, where they hope to settle down and enjoy a more peaceful mode of existence, far from the incessant demands of women.  When their wives show up unexpectedly the two men take flight and head for open countryside, where they are joined by hundreds of other men who are doing exactly the same thing.  The ragtag band of weary males is no match for the army of organised females that suddenly appears from nowhere.  As the women make their charge, the men scatter in a wild panic.  Paul and Albert are captured, and the next thing they know they are in some kind of fertilisation clinic, their sole function being to inseminate a never-ending line of sexually dominant women.  Their worst nightmare has become a terrible reality...