Buffet froid

It takes a special kind of quality to make anything that is bleak and absurd and empty into something that truly holds up without being complete intellectualism/artistic onanism. This film achieves that.

It also takes a special kind of quality to make anything completely remote and arbitrary funny. This film achieves that. It's quite hilarious at times because it's so fresh, and random and unexpected although it's utterly consistent with itself.

Depardieu is awesome as always and more than any other buys into the shenanigans of the concept brilliantly, it's like he's a real life person although his entire character is most perfectly ridiculous and impossible.

There are fine symbolic psychological traits that bring about some kind of aesthetic to the film (Blier's character and his aversion for music). Moreover, the completely barren urban landscapes, seemingly perpetually nocturnal, (that vacant building) and the eerie absence of anyone but the protagonists during any one scene bring this nightmarish facet to the whole which adds to the comic absurdism. It's like they're all alone in their strange old little planet, and it doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.

Top notch. Also, the pacing and format are just right. At under 1hr30 this is pure efficient cinema that delivers the goods and don't spoil that fine taste from the beginning. Ending is on par with the rest of it. Very well done. Rare quality. 8.5/10.

This is one of my favorite black comedies, on a level with Strangelove, After Hours, The Loved One, Little Murders and Cul de Sac. A kind of Three Stooges meets Samuel Beckett, it successfully traverses farce, slapstick, absurdism, and intellectual existential psychodrama. The stooges are hilarious, particularly Bernard Blier, the great French character actor (and father of director,) while the women are all in danger but really in control of this careening nightmare. The shift 3/4ths of the way through from the surreal city nightscape into the sunny countryside is brilliant and leads to a perfect ending...

I went in really having no idea what this movie was about. I do that sometimes so as to get more surprise, in essence to get more out of the experience. Well in this case I was not only surprised but even amazed. Nothing that I was expecting was coming out as I thought... ohhh yes, except at the end. The final was the only logical way to conclude such a strange story. And interestingly enough, that too goes against common sense, whereas in regular movie, the final is often an attempt to surprise the viewers.

Of course this is a farce, of course it makes no sense whatsoever. But the point is that it's funny and clearly out of this world. So, once you get the idea, all you have to do is let yourselves be carried by the flow. In fact, after a while I was even playing with possible next victims... but I was fooled all the time. I am just too Cartesian, hehehe!

At any rate, it does take a special sense of humor to appreciate this movie. The acting by all the seasoned actors is just right, cool, no exaggeration, just enough to get the story moving along, however weird it might be.

In conclusion, this is a very unusual and therefore interesting movie.

Seriously, Gerard Depardieu has done very little for English language cinema. 1492? My Father The Hero? Green Card? I'll pass, thanks. But with subtitles he's great. This little-known absurdist drama puts him as one of three mismatched men linked by murder and random chance. The films opens at a train station where Depardieu meets a man who is soon dead – possibly by Depardieu's own hand. His wife dismisses it, but is soon dead herself. The police detective upstairs doesn't want to know, he has his own problems. And then the wife's murderer shows up for a chat. Could be a terrible thriller – is a bizarre comedy. The daunting, oppressive cityscapes in the bulk of the film eventually give way to a disconcerting bucolic countryside for the finale, but the surrealism never lets up. Enter this world, and don't expect to leave intact.

Alphonse Tram is plagued by nightmares of murder and pursuit. Employing existentialism, absurdism and even a little slapstick, writer/director Bertrand Blier leads Alphonse (Gerard Depardieu), his randomly acquired companions, and the viewer through a maze of hallways, stairways, and pathways to meet his fate.

The performances by Depardieu, Blier's father Bernard Blier, and a supporting cast made up of stars from French film and theatre (including an early cameo by Michel Serrault, best known as Albin/Zaza in "La Cage aux Folles"), are all marvelously nuanced and the film hasn't a beat out of place.