Buffet froid

Imagine a crime film without all the usual elements - a beginning (crime), middle (investigation) and end; a guilty criminal and an investigative detective; a femme fatale who is punished; a restoration of order. BUFFET FROID is the nightmare flipside of the policier, where the hero is an unemployed philosopher, who may or may not be a murderer, who befriends his wife's killer, and his neighbour, a detective who sanctions paid homicide and is trapped in a plot where the answer he seeks is himself. Every revelation leads to further obfuscation and instead of the restoration of order is its destruction.

The film plays like a futuristic thriller directed by Bunuel - and if Blier's ultimate timidity means it's never quite as good as that, it's still a remarkable achievement in mainstream, never mind generic, cinema, and very, very funny.

'Buffet Froid' made in 1979 by Bertrand Blier can be seen as an almost perfect antithesis of the films of the French New Wave that had burst into the cinema world two decades ago. If the New Wave was a Reformation, this film belongs to the Counter-Reformation. Formal simplicity is opposed by abstract sophistication. Lively street scenes are opposed by empty streets at night or lofts transported from New York to the sky-scrappers in the Defense district of Paris. The characters drawn from life are opposed by characters descending from Beckett's or Ionesco's theater. Sincerity is opposed by lack of emotion. Naturalism is opposed by absurd. But, maybe it's all a dream?

The film starts with a ten minute scene that takes place in a Paris subway station. Two characters entertain a dialogue that could be extracted from 'En attendant Godot'. It's about the dreams, or better said the nightmares that haunt one of them (played by Gérard Depardieu). In the dream he is a wanted assassin, followed but never caught by the police. Does the dream start here? Or maybe we are in a dream in the beginning, as Parisians know, the La Defense subway station is never completely empty, not even at night. Further action includes corpses, fast consoled widows, car chases, assassination attempts through music, wine bottles and canned food. Nothing makes too much sense. The characters act like robots that do a lousy job, both socially and emotionally.

The film has an interesting aesthetics, even if too obviously programmatic. Dialogues are fun, even if they seem a little retro nowadays. Existentialism and absurd theater need landmarks to be appreciated and enjoyed all the way. These are missing in this movie, which looks more like an absurd theater show filmed in the '70s. As a spectator I can not fail to appreciate the acting performances of Depardieu, Bernard Blier, and others, but I would have preferred them to be used for better causes.

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.