Tag Archives: Carole Bouquet

Apocryphally Weird

35*. BUFFET FROID (1979)

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“The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.”–André Breton

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DIRECTED BY: Bertrand Blier

FEATURING: , Bernard Blier, Jean Carmet, ,

PLOT: Soon after telling a man in the Paris subway about his fantasies of committing murder, Alphonse discovers the man dying with Alphonse’s own switchblade in his chest. Rushing home, he teams up with a police inspector and a hapless criminal who confesses to killing Alphonse’s wife. The trio goes out into the world, confronting both a variety of people who wish to kill them or to be killed by them.

Still from Buffet Froid (1979)

BACKGROUND:

  • Writer-director Bertrand Blier won the César (France’s Oscar) for Best Writing for Buffet Froid. The film was also nominated in the cinematography, editing, and production design categories.
  • Buffet Froid feels very ian, even more so since Blier cast two actresses who had previously worked on Luis Buñuel films: Geneviève Page and Carole Bouquet.
  • Bernard Blier (Inspector Morvandieu) is the director’s father. It was his third appearance in one of his son’s films.
  • The role of the man harassed by Alphonse in the subway is played by an uncredited Michel Serrault, who is probably best known as Albin in the original La cage aux folles.
  • The opening scene is set in the Metro station at La Défense, which now sits directly underneath the monumental La Grande Arche building in the Parisian suburbs.
  • The film was not released in the United States until 1987. American critics were fiercely negative.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It’s tempting to select the terrific jump cut when the leading trio is informed that they need to relax, and suddenly find themselves convalescing in front of a rustic cottage in the woods. But for a singular image, there’s great spectacle in the moment when a policeman responds to an emergency call only to find that he himself is the victim. His wide-eyed horror at being ushered into his deathbed while a string quintet assembles to serenade him into the great beyond is unforgettably hilarious.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: The widow moves in; assassin gets a head start in the water

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Buffet Froid is epic in its underplaying. Forget consequences; it posits a world where crime doesn’t pay because it doesn’t matter. The body count wouldn’t be out of place in a Hollywood thriller, but a strange combination of fear of dying and reluctance to be caught underlies everything. It’s telling that Alphonse doesn’t lose his cool when he finds his own knife sticking out of a dying man, or even when he discovers his wife’s murder (and murderer). No, it’s only when a man tells him bluntly, “Accept your responsibilities and I’ll be on my way” that he stops dead in his tracks. Buffet Froid depicts a world gone mad, but in the most controlled way possible.

Trailer for Buffet Froid

COMMENTS: Buffet Froid lays out its premise almost immediately. Continue reading 35*. BUFFET FROID (1979) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

359. THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977)

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Cet obscur objet du désir

“One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.”–Friedrich Nietzsche

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DIRECTED BY: Luis Buñuel

FEATURING: , , , (voice)

PLOT: A man boards a train, followed by a younger woman with a bandaged head; he sees her coming, hides, and dumps a bucket of water over her. When he returns to his passenger compartment, he explains to his shocked fellow travelers that she was the “worst woman on earth.” He then spins the long tale of how he tried to court the young Spanish dancer over many years, but she always led him on, professing to love him but repeatedly refusing to consummate the relationship.

Still from That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

BACKGROUND:

  • That Obscure Object of Desire was adapted from the 1898 novel “La Femme et le Pantin” (“The Woman and the Puppet”) by  Pierre Louÿs. Buñuel had tried, and failed, to adapt the novel in the 1950s. The story had been adapted to film three times before, most famously as The Devil is a Woman (1935, d. ) with .
  • This was the sixth collaboration between screenwriter and Buñuel. All but their first effort (Diary of a Chambermaid) have been Certified Weird here. This was Buñuel’s final film before he died. Carrière continues to write scripts to this day.
  • According to Carrière, the idea to cast two women in the role of Conchita occurred in an early draft of the script, but was discarded. When production began on the movie Buñuel was unhappy with the actress chosen to play Conchita (Last Tango in Paris’ Maria Schneider) and came close to abandoning the project before resurrecting the idea of using dual actresses in the role. Buñuel, however, seemed to remember it differently, saying that he came up with the idea of casting two women in the part during a discussion with producer Serge Silberman about the fact that Schneider wasn’t working out; although he immediately thought the idea was “stupid” the moment he said it, Silberman loved it and insisted they try it.
  • An uncredited third actress dubbed both Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina.
  • Michel Piccoli dubbed Fernando Rey’s voice; so technically, two actors portrayed the male lead as well.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Our choice is notable not only for its mystery, but also because, coincidentally, it was the last scene Buñuel shot in a career of 48 years. Mathieu and Conchita, reunited and apparently happy, walk through a shopping gallery. In a window, they observe an old woman take a bloodstained lace scarf and begin mending it. Both seem fascinated by the display as the camera focuses on the needle penetrating the fabric. A voice on the loudspeaker describes a bloody assassination attempt on an Archbishop, then switches to a Wagner aria. The significance of this scene is puzzling; more so because we do not know if the couple has slept together, or if Conchita’s virginity is still intact.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Private-lesson dwarf psychologist; Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus; pig baby

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: In my original review, I prematurely dismissed Obscure Object for consideration from the List, calling it “one of Buñuel’s best, but not one of his weirdest.” Fortunately, readers corrected my lapse in judgement in a 2013 poll. Obscure Object has occupied my mind for years after I first saw it; a true confirmation of its classic status. I still hold it’s one of Buñuel’s best; and if it’s not one of his weirdest, then we have to allow for the fact that Buñuel’s weirdest includes the prototypical surrealist film and Obscure Object‘s plotless immediate predecessor Phantom of Liberty, among other amazements. Invoking the sliding scale of quality, I rule that a cinema classic where two women play the same role and no one notices qualifies as weird enough to earn our notice. Add that it’s the swan song of one of weird cinema’s founding fathers, and a damn fine piece of cinema to boot, and its inclusion is assured.


Clip from That Obscure Object of Desire

COMMENTS: The “gimmick” of two actresses playing the object of Continue reading 359. THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977) →