Tenue de soirée

Except some early works, Bernard Blier's movies are clearly recognizable by the peculiar tone and pace of the dialogues and the surreal plots. His filmography is erratic but the best movies (Les Valseuses, Calmos, Tenue de Soirée...) are true masterpieces. I will not talk much about the story, that is very incidental, because Menage is above all a swirl of memorable lines and great acting that a simple synopsis can't describe. It's like a waltz with a unique tempo that sweeps the spectator away in a wild ride. Enjoy.

The film is hilarious, particularly enjoyable and sad. We wonder for a while where Bertrand Blier is going, especially during the first third of the film, but finally the film takes us away and we don't care, as Michel Blanc and Miou-Miou, who are caught in the whirlwinds that Bob, that is Gérard Depardieu, in the role of the one who always has an idea in the back of his head.

This is an opportunity for the actors to say some anthology dialogues during relatively trivial scenes where the different actors are credible. Bertrand Blier writes a score that his actors interpret with brio.

We believe in it, and it is the strength of the film: this couple who meets Gérard Depardieu, a seductive burglar whose interest in the couple we do not understand at first and then we end up understanding (or not!). And to finish the last final scene where our 3 main characters do the trot in a set of high-flying dialogues for a sequence of impressive power: it's a huge score that the director-writer has written for them.

The film contains its share of anthology scenes that he seems to string together like pearls, some of them with a lot of humor, but also a lot of despair.

With Tenue de Soiree, Blier is once again investigating male insecurity and men's relations with other men. Essentially a remake of Les Valseuses, this film quickly removes the presence of a woman (Monique) to leave the way clear for Bob's seduction of Antoine. A complex film, part crime comedy, part transvestite film, Blier seems to lose his way at the midpoint and the ending seems tacked on. Depardieu and Blanc in particular are excellent, but the script lets them down. A homophobe becomes a fully dressed transsexual in about 90 minutes, hardly realistic and the misogynistic tone of the film can be draining. A useful companion piece to Les Valseuses, but it is only half the film that Les Valseuses was in 1974.

Yet another misguided summary on IMDb describes the Depardieu character named Bob as "bisexual", but if you follow the plot, Bob is actually gay with minimal interest in women.

At a ball Bob meets crummy, quarrelling couple Monique and Antoine and taking a fancy for Antoine, decides to involve the two of them into his life of burglaries. All this taking place with the most vulgar dialogues and surreal sequences. Bob tries hard to seduce Antoine, who resists until the day Monique manages to get to bed with a most uninterested Bob.

Once Antonio and Bob become an item, Monique turns into their housekeeper until Bob decides to get rid of her, only to get bored with Antoine and to go out looking for other preys.

After a mild melodramatic and silly scene at a ball, the stupid plot wraps up in a total incoherent way with Bob, Antoine and Monique working as street walkers. If you give a damn about these disgusting people, you may wonder why Bob would give up his thriving career as a burglar to walk the streets, but then again very little makes sense in this film.

I continue to enjoy Blier's twisted imagination, and the way he makes blackly comic and surreal films that are not like anyone else's. He is often accused of being a misogynist, but to me, his men are no less screwed up (indeed they often seem more so) in these studies of sexuality, relationships, social norms and morality.

In this case we start with an unhappy. broke and bored couple Antoine (Michel Blanc) and Monique (Miou-Miou). Into their lives dances (literally) Bob (Gerard Depardieu) a sexy, swaggering, amoral, bi-sexual ex-con and thief. Before you can blink he has seduced the couple into joining him on his raids on the houses of the rich. Meanwhile the sexual politics between the three get ever more complex as it becomes clear Bob is far more turned on to the mousy, devoutly heterosexual Antoine than he is to the more obviously attractive Monique. Ultimately it becomes, in it's absurdist way a meditation on how power and sex work in relationships, as well as letting go of one's self-image.

All three actors are terrific, but Depardieu in particular seems to be having a blast – a macho tough guy one second, a tender gay romancer the next. All played with a kind of honesty and humanity that only makes the extremes that much funnier.