Calmos

Two men are 'on the run' for women. A gynecologist and a pimp have an incredible urge to live in a country without women.

As for the films of director Bertrand Blier, many are praised, but this one not so much. It is understandable why. It starts quite slow and seems a little bit too straightforward for Blier's standards. Les Valseuses (made only a year prior to this film), Buffet froid and Preparez vos mouchoirs tackle the theme less predictable.

But, as others pointed out as well, this film should be placed within its time frame, the 70's, an era in which women were becoming quickly much more independent. I can even remember as a young kid seeing the graffiti 'Wicca' painted everywhere in the my city. And Blier quite captured it, as if he wanted to make a TIME CAPSULE about this subject. He plays with the insecurity of men via the characters of Paul and Albert. They don't hate women, they are just scared of their (sexual) aggressiveness. In this case even in the shape of the most masculine symbol of all… a tank.

I quite loved it anyway. We might have not the Blier-show we are used to but there's still a lot of great cinema to watch, like when Paul consoles Albert when having a nightmare about women; the opening sequence (Paul eating pate when a women spreads her legs and waits impatiently); the scene in which they warn a boy about women. And of course the unforgettable final episode of the film, which will have sparked many discussions in 1976.

While you might have second thoughts about its theme, you should approve the cinematography of the film. Done by Claude Renoir, nephew of the great director Jean Renoir (and thereby grandson of the famous painter). His aid are fantastic actors and great music. While Jean Rochefort is almost always wonderful, in this case, the best performance comes from Jean-Pierre Marielle, whose talent unfortunately is often misused in mediocre films.

I saw this movie a long time ago when it was billed as "Femmes Fatales". I remember it as one of the most bizarrely amusing films I've ever seen. While perhaps not as sophisticated as Blier's later efforts, as I remember, it had a crude power and was a scathing look at male/female relations: a kind of cinematic exploration of the male id done with great honesty and comic bravura. I wish I could see it again...but I've never seen it offerred anywhere. It doesn't seem to be on VHS or DVD. If anyone knows where to get it I wish they'd post it here.

It was French comedian Coluche who once said "I take fun from areas where people work, while gynecologists do the opposite". Well, Pierre Dufour (Jean-Pierre Marielle) would certainly acquiesce, his work consists of examining the intimacy of female patients at high cadency, making him the least likely candidate for satisfying any needs going through that area. And so when we meet him, he's a man who's got professional burnout written all over his stern face and Bertrand Blier found quite a bizarre way to depict his escape from professional alienation.

It is a scene the expression "seeing is believing" exists for, Pierre's having an improvised meal on his office while one of his patients, a bourgeois lady laying on the stirrups keeps her legs spread so he has a clear view on a real-life representation of the "Origin of the World". The scene is awkwardly silent, Pierre picks a big baguette (no innuendo... I guess), some pâté and wine, and then the breaking point is reached at the first bite when his patient starts scratching her public hair (and I add an "l" to avoid problems). The next shot is stylistically perfect with the two legs in the foreground and the man slowly rising in-between, you don't make symbolic rebirth more explicit.

What follows is one of the most hilarious scenes of 70s cinema, a woman approaches Pierre and asks for "Gustave Flaubert street" "why are you asking?" he shouts. "None of your business" she says "then don't bust my balls! That's all I'm asking" Thinking she'll find an allied spirit in a passer-by played by Jean Rochefort, she gets the second round "Can"t you see he's had enough? You want the incident or what?" the two men leave the woman totally bewildered, their friendship instantly sealed by a mutual disdain for a demographic category they chose to label as ball-breakers. Why they say they've had enough might get over the heads of many viewers and I too had to check some trivia.

The film was released in 1976, the Year of the Woman in France, shortly after the legalization of abortion and the sexual liberation movement where women proclaimed ownership on their body and criticized patriarchy (before it became a trend). Visibly triggered, the two men decided that women can't have the cake and eat it so they ran away to a remote village in the countryside. There's a rampant misogyny that hasn't aged well and Bier himself admitted that the film was a big farce that went a little out of control but to his defense, there's something irreverential and libertarian matching the post-68 era and that middle-aged men were no less entitled to embrace.

In a way, "Calmos" is less an anti-feminist than a masculinist film, contradicting the idea that men are only driven by lust-driven appetites. If anything once they moved to a pastoral setting, Pierre and Albert rediscover the pleasures of good food and wine and befriend a truculent alcoholic priest played by Blier's father Bertrand. At that point, the two friends have reached a certain harmony although Albert played by Rochefort seems more uncertain.... I admire the two actors, Marielle is so grandiloquent and histrionic he takes the lion share of one-liners and makes Rochefort a little bland in comparison. I was also wary that the film would lose his breath but the two men's wives (Brigitte Fossey and Valérie Mairesse ) come back and blackmail the priest into convincing the fellows to go back to Paris.

The 'back to house' part isn't exactly the film's highlight and might strike as more blatantly misogynistic in the way it features every woman as a potential nympho. But then the duo escapes again into the open country followed by other men tired of having to fulfill marital duties to ungrateful creatures. Some could even see a sort of "Fight Club" brotherhood with men tired of asserting their masculinity. At some point one of the followers (Gérard Jugnot) complain that there's not much to do, he's told to get back to his wife if he wants order. Can't have it all. It quickly gets out of control when the men meet with a tank and the two heroes are captured by a squad of military Amazon women. It's an interesting form of female empowerment with a subversion of roles and an ahead-of-its-time depiction of a certain sensual female gaze. And basically at that point, you understand that this is not a film that you should question, you just follow the flot and see how weird it can get.

And so we get to the final chapter where Pierre and Albert are in a medical lab in Paris, fixed to their beds and with enormous erections, and women come for a two-minute of copulation. It's "A Clockwork Orange" crossed with Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex". At that point, you never know whether it's insulting to women to reduce them to sexual needs or men as phallic objects... one thing for sure, the film won't be aired any soon. Still, it has achieved a certain time-capsule significance through its reference to that period where the line between liberty and license had already been crossed, one that ironically desacralized the female body and made men less accountable for their actions, highlighting a certain hypocrisy of a movement that rejected the patriarcal machinery but not all the tools.

The film concludes on the kind of surreal note that bookends the opening, maybe a tribute to that Bukowski story of a man so small he was used by his woman as a dildo... as if it was shot by Terry Gilliam. I don't know if the film's message would really pass today but I admire the creativity of Bertrand Blier, Marielle's performance and the messy yet refreshing bizarreness of that piece of cinematic weirdness...

This movie is not a mastermiece but it's a beautiful ode to male life. This film is provocative but it's refreshing to see it as feminists are going further and further in excess. The actors Rochefort and Marielle play very well their roles which go from adventure to misadventure.

I must admit that when i saw this old film, i couldn't help but go to my butcher and buy some cold cuts and 2 bottles of wines 😊 (a man from Beaujolais). A proverb in the Beaujolais region says that it is better to see your wife run away than your barrel of wine ! This film shows that the pleasure of a woman is worth the pleasure of the table and wine 🍷

Bertrand Blier's film "Femmes Fatales" a/k/a "Calmos" - A very funny and outrageous sex comedy by one of the great French filmmakers. Still groundbreaking after all these years, there's been nothing at all like it. Constantly surprising and hilarious.

The terrific cast is headed by the director's father Bernard Blier and the always wonderful Jean Rochefort as a gynecologist.

Blier's take on the war between men and women is fresh and original and probably as valid and illuminating as any scholarly analysis of the battle of the sexes only much, much funnier. Disappointing that it hasn't been made available on DVD. If presented and promoted properly it could well become a true Home Movie smash.

At least an "8".