Trop belle pour toi (1989)
Directed by Bertrand Blier

Film Review

Ah, the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie...  Bertrand Blier's most acclaimed film, Trop belle pour toi owes so much to Luis Buñuel that you could almost swear Buñuel had a hand in making it. Blier not only shares Buñuel's love of the absurd but also has something of his iconoclastic temperament, gleefully shattering the conventions of cinema whilst setting fire to the sacred cows of polite middle-class society. On paper, Trop belle pour toi is the most banal of subjects, a humdrum tale of marital infidelity in which a man falls in love with his secretary and ends up losing both his wife and his mistress.  Yet, as in all of Blier's films, the story is infinitely less important than what the director does with it.  Here, in his most inspired, most beautifully composed film, Bertrand Blier is far less concerned with incident (who does what to whom and how) than with the underlying passions that take possession of his characters and cruelly wrecks their lives.  Despite its radical departure from the conventional narrative form and the slightness of its story, Trop belle pour toi manages to be one of cinema's most delicately heartrending poems to the destructive power of an amorous infatuation.

Like Buñuel before him, Blier is not afraid to abolish the boundary that separates reality and imagination, and also to dispense with the linear narrative form.  Past and present overlap and become intertwined with the daydreams of the protagonists, to the extent that we lose sight of where real-life ends and fantasy takes over. Scenes that appear to take place in the real world are punctuated by unreal (even surreal) theatrical devices - characters talking to camera, telling us what is about to happen in the story, or re-enacting an incident that has already taken place.  The most obvious Buñuel reference is the dinner party sequence, which is inter-cut with a wedding banquet in order to underscore the brutal consequences of the extra-marital affair whilst reminding us of the transient nature of romantic love.  Even though the film flits between past and present, reality and dreams with scant regard for narrative logic, it does so seamlessly; far from appearing disjointed or confused, the film has an extraordinary coherence, an impression that is reinforced by Schubert's ever-present music, which emphasises and sustains the relentless melancholia of the piece.

Gérard Depardieu's fifth collaboration with Bertrand Blier is his most successful and it is doubtful that the actor ever gave a finer performance than the one he offers here.  Depardieu's style of acting often has an unreal quality that sometimes jars in his cinema portrayals, but here it is perfectly in tune with the semi-theatrical style of the film.  The actor's masculine physique and magnetic male charisma are both belied by a very noticeable feminine sensitivity which makes his character appear totally exposed, utterly vulnerable in this film. It is the two female protagonists - magnificently portrayed by Josiane Balasko and Carole Bouquet - who are in the driving seat, propelling the ill-fated love triangle to its inevitable tragic conclusion.  Depardieu plays the victim so perfectly that he retains our sympathy, even when he is going off on one of his anti-Schubert rants.  A man who hates Schubert is clearly sick.

As is typical of Blier, the female roles are crudely inverted, so that it is the dowdy frump (Balasko) who becomes the object of desire, whilst the glamorous beauty (Bouquet) is the rejected wife.  The treachery of surface impressions is a theme that recurs in Blier's anti-bourgeois, non-conformist cinema, and Trop belle pour toi is one of those rare films in which interior beauty, rather than its meretricious external cousin, provides the force that unleashes the whirlwinds of desire.  Blier's nuanced and sympathetic treatment of his two female characters went some way to challenging the popular view at the time that he was a misogynistic filmmaker.   Balasko has never been so well-served by a script, and has perhaps never looked so alluring, whilst Bouquet's appeal goes far beyond the merely decorative.

Trop belle pour toi represents a highpoint in Bertrand Blier's career.  Not only was it an immense critical success, it was also the most commercially successful French film of the year, attracting an audience of just over two million.  It took the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for eleven Césars, winning awards in five categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Carole Bouquet), Best Writing and Best Editing.  Whilst it may not be the most daring of Blier's films, Trop belle pour toi is a masterpiece of originality and understated subversion, possibly the director's greatest film, certainly one of his most accesible.  The film's immense popularity powerfully refutes the notion that cinema experimentation and mainstream success are mutually exclusive.

Film Synopsis

Bernard Barthélémy is a successful car dealer who has a beautiful and adoring wife, Florence.  His ordered, middle-class life is suddenly upended when he falls in love with his secretary, Colette.  Although she is rather plain, vulgar and lacking in the social graces, Bernard cannot help being drawn to Colette and the two are soon pursuing a passionate love affair.  It is not long before Florence discovers her husband's infidelity and realises that their marriage is over.  Once the flames of desire have cooled, Bernard must accept that he has lost both Florence and Colette...