Buffet Froid

Rating:
Summary: Death Warmed Up
Review: "Buffet Froid" is a thriller without thrills, a murder mystery with no solution, and a comedy that's only funny to a certain type of person. When you add all these ingredients up, you get one heck of a surrealist piece. It is a movie many people will hate after just one viewing. It is bleak, morbid, ruthless, and bizarre in its apparent lack of concern for plot or realism. When I watched in my high-school French class, there wasn't much laughter, though there was a lot of "What??" and "Oh, my God..." I didn't hate it, though. I was quite intrigued.

The film opens in a metro station, where a young man named Alphonse (Gerard Depardieu) attempts to engage an unfriendly older man in conversation. Oddly, the man warms up when the topic of duscussion switches to death and murder. Alphonse produces a switchblade knife, and it's hard to tell if he's threatening or just emphasizing his words. The knife vanishes; the older man grows frightened and flees on a train; and very shortly afterward, Alphonse finds him lying in a passageway with the knife buried in his stomach. Is Alphonse the murderer? Not even he knows.

Alphonse goes home, where his wife doesn't react at all upon learning of the murder. They live in a cheerless apartment halfway up a large tenement complex that is completely uninhabited except for them and their new upstairs neighbor, a police chief. Alphonse's wife goes missing and turns up murdered in a vacant lot, and before we know it, a short, nervous man is knocking on Alphonse's door and introducing himself as the murderer. Alphonse invites him in for a drink, and they are soon joined by the police chief ("I'd like you to meet my wife's murderer." "Pleasure."). Then another man shows up who wants Alphonse to assassinate someone for him, but the victim turns out to be...and so on.

"Buffet Froid" may not look like a surrealist piece, but it definitely is. All throughout the movie, there's a sense of wrongness and unreality. Alphonse, the chief, and the murderer form a kind of alliance and have an odd series of adventures that all result in someone's death. Over the course of the film, no less than fifteen people are shot, stabbed, strangled, drowned, or suffocated, and yet the characters never react to the deaths with anything other than vague interest or mild annoyance. Everyone in the movie is either a murderer or has the potential to be one. No one behaves like a normal human being would in the circumstances, and this makes the film much more unpredictable and unsettling.

It's not just the acting, either. The cinematography is all browns, grays, and earthy colors, with an occaisonal startling splash of bright red (not blood; there is no blood anywhere in the film, despite all the death). There is virtually no music, except in a bizarre scene where Alphonse and the police chief visit a wealthy home and the chief is literally tortured by a string quintet. The scenes have little connection, and the motives of the characters are completely random, except for one person who I won't reveal. The closing scenes involve a bridge, a rowboat, and an ironic final twist that brings the plot in a macabre full circle. As the end credits roll, you feel unsatisfied because you're used to a conclusion that makes sense and wraps everything up. Oh, "Buffet Froid" wraps everything up, but definitely not in a happily-ever-after kind of way.

So, these are my thoughts on this peculiar little film. I recommend it to fans of surrealism and/or morbid humor. I can't say how much I "liked" it, but I admired its style and unapologetic ghoulishness. As long as France keeps making weird movies, I suppose I'll keep watching them. That is all.

Rating:
Summary: Death Warmed Up
Review: "Buffet Froid" is a thriller without thrills, a murder mystery with no solution, and a comedy that's only funny to a certain type of person. When you add all these ingredients up, you get one heck of a surrealist piece. It is a movie many people will hate after just one viewing. It is bleak, morbid, ruthless, and bizarre in its apparent lack of concern for plot or realism. When I watched in my high-school French class, there wasn't much laughter, though there was a lot of "What??" and "Oh, my God..." I didn't hate it, though. I was quite intrigued.

The film opens in a metro station, where a young man named Alphonse (Gerard Depardieu) attempts to engage an unfriendly older man in conversation. Oddly, the man warms up when the topic of duscussion switches to death and murder. Alphonse produces a switchblade knife, and it's hard to tell if he's threatening or just emphasizing his words. The knife vanishes; the older man grows frightened and flees on a train; and very shortly afterward, Alphonse finds him lying in a passageway with the knife buried in his stomach. Is Alphonse the murderer? Not even he knows.

Alphonse goes home, where his wife doesn't react at all upon learning of the murder. They live in a cheerless apartment halfway up a large tenement complex that is completely uninhabited except for them and their new upstairs neighbor, a police chief. Alphonse's wife goes missing and turns up murdered in a vacant lot, and before we know it, a short, nervous man is knocking on Alphonse's door and introducing himself as the murderer. Alphonse invites him in for a drink, and they are soon joined by the police chief ("I'd like you to meet my wife's murderer." "Pleasure."). Then another man shows up who wants Alphonse to assassinate someone for him, but the victim turns out to be...and so on.

"Buffet Froid" may not look like a surrealist piece, but it definitely is. All throughout the movie, there's a sense of wrongness and unreality. Alphonse, the chief, and the murderer form a kind of alliance and have an odd series of adventures that all result in someone's death. Over the course of the film, no less than fifteen people are shot, stabbed, strangled, drowned, or suffocated, and yet the characters never react to the deaths with anything other than vague interest or mild annoyance. Everyone in the movie is either a murderer or has the potential to be one. No one behaves like a normal human being would in the circumstances, and this makes the film much more unpredictable and unsettling.

It's not just the acting, either. The cinematography is all browns, grays, and earthy colors, with an occaisonal startling splash of bright red (not blood; there is no blood anywhere in the film, despite all the death). There is virtually no music, except in a bizarre scene where Alphonse and the police chief visit a wealthy home and the chief is literally tortured by a string quintet. The scenes have little connection, and the motives of the characters are completely random, except for one person who I won't reveal. The closing scenes involve a bridge, a rowboat, and an ironic final twist that brings the plot in a macabre full circle. As the end credits roll, you feel unsatisfied because you're used to a conclusion that makes sense and wraps everything up. Oh, "Buffet Froid" wraps everything up, but definitely not in a happily-ever-after kind of way.

So, these are my thoughts on this peculiar little film. I recommend it to fans of surrealism and/or morbid humor. I can't say how much I "liked" it, but I admired its style and unapologetic ghoulishness. As long as France keeps making weird movies, I suppose I'll keep watching them. That is all.

Rating:
Summary: I gotta dissent....
Review: Don't get me wrong. I LOVE French films, Theater of the Absurd, Surrealism, Dada, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet. I think all the actors in this film are tops, especially Bernard Blier. But this movie is like a high school exercise in all of the above styles - it's shallow, predictable & not at all imaginative. The only thing that saves it for me is Michel Serrault's cameo scene in the beginning. Maybe I would liked it more if I were dependent on sub-titles.

Rating:
Summary: a cold snack
Review: i sat down in the student center of my high school a few years ago to watch this movie just because it happened to be on television and i loved it from begining to end. well, not so much directly from the begining because it wasn't what i expected. lets say from five minutes into it till the end. as soon as i realized how dry and terrific it was, i was taken. this movie redefines comedy (in a good way).

Rating:
Summary: A very funny dark movie
Review: I watched the Buffet Froid DVD recently. It's a superbly surreal black comedy from Bertrand Blier. It won a Cesar award for the screenplay. Gerard Depardieu plays an unemployed guy named Alphonse Tram, who may or may not have killed a stranger in the subway. He lives with his wife in a strange and stylish, almost empty high-rise apartment block. That is until she is killed by a misogynist murderer who is afraid of the dark. He knocks on Alphonse's door and announces this to him after her death; Alphonse then immediately makes him a meal and chats amiably with him.

The other main character is an odd police chief inspector (played by the director's father). Alphonse tells him he could have knifed a man in the subway, and later introduces him to his wife's murderer. The inspector completely overlooks all this of course. The inspector tells the other two men it's better to keep the murderers on the streets, that way they don't contaminate the innocent in prison. Another scene has the three men comforting the wife of a man they have just killed (on his instructions). She is then extremely ill in bed, and the trio call for a doctor. He arrives, and then makes love to the stricken lady while the men watch. Afterwards he gives the diagnosis, "It's just a minor viral infection."

The misogynist murderer is later seen searching for a woman alone to kill. A man tells him there's a mature lady who lives next door to him. "How do you know she's mature?", "Because she makes Jam.", he offers. The police inspector later asks for around thirty officers to accompany him to a house to arrest a violinist, just because he is allergic to them. It is all very funny, surreal and refreshing. If you like the later films of Buñuel, you'll like Buffet Froid.

Rating:
Summary: A scathingly surreal and hilarious black comedy
Review: I watched the Buffet Froid DVD recently. It's a superbly surreal black comedy from Bertrand Blier. It won a Cesar award for the screenplay. Gerard Depardieu plays an unemployed guy named Alphonse Tram, who may or may not have killed a stranger in the subway. He lives with his wife in a strange and stylish, almost empty high-rise apartment block. That is until she is killed by a misogynist murderer who is afraid of the dark. He knocks on Alphonse's door and announces this to him after her death; Alphonse then immediately makes him a meal and chats amiably with him.

The other main character is an odd police chief inspector (played by the director's father). Alphonse tells him he could have knifed a man in the subway, and later introduces him to his wife's murderer. The inspector completely overlooks all this of course. The inspector tells the other two men it's better to keep the murderers on the streets, that way they don't contaminate the innocent in prison. Another scene has the three men comforting the wife of a man they have just killed (on his instructions). She is then extremely ill in bed, and the trio call for a doctor. He arrives, and then makes love to the stricken lady while the men watch. Afterwards he gives the diagnosis, "It's just a minor viral infection."

The misogynist murderer is later seen searching for a woman alone to kill. A man tells him there's a mature lady who lives next door to him. "How do you know she's mature?", "Because she makes Jam.", he offers. The police inspector later asks for around thirty officers to accompany him to a house to arrest a violinist, just because he is allergic to them. It is all very funny, surreal and refreshing. If you like the later films of Buñuel, you'll like Buffet Froid.

Rating:
Summary: comedy's hard to do...black comedy even tougher
Review: I'm a fan of "Get Out Your Hankerchiefs" so assumed this offering from the same director would at least be enjoyable. I kept waiting for something funny to be done or said. I waited and waited. "The Trouble With Harry" or "Dr.Strangelove" are both great black comedies. This strives to be in their league but falls way short of the mark. It's possible that something's lost in the translation because to give the subtitles a dry read is to only further understand why French people revere Jerry Lewis-silliness in a somewhat surreal setting (wow, listen to that alliteration) does not necessarily make for a good comedy. Also the lack of subtlety (in every way with every character)makes this particularly off-putting. I'm at a loss as to how anyone could consider this even mediocre, much less brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: comedy's hard to do...black comedy even tougher
Review: I'm a fan of "Get Out Your Hankerchiefs" so assumed this offering from the same director would at least be enjoyable. I kept waiting for something funny to be done or said. I waited and waited. "The Trouble With Harry" or "Dr.Strangelove" are both great black comedies. This strives to be in their league but falls way short of the mark. It's possible that something's lost in the translation because to give the subtitles a dry read is to only further understand why French people revere Jerry Lewis-silliness in a somewhat surreal setting (wow, listen to that alliteration) does not necessarily make for a good comedy. Also the lack of subtlety (in every way with every character)makes this particularly off-putting. I'm at a loss as to how anyone could consider this even mediocre, much less brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: The best black comedy in the seventies
Review: In the best tradition of Luis Buñuel and a touch of Billy Wilder, this puzzle comedy turns around three paranoid men each one with his particular focus.
Blier plays the role of the policeman who decides to break the rules.
Depardieu as always is top notch.
The script sails between the irony and the tragedy. It's a clever surrealistic journey about situations out of control.
Please, let the logical out your mind and be part of this well made film.
Enjoyable from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: The best black comedy in the seventies
Review: In the best tradition of Luis Buñuel and a touch of Billy Wilder, this puzzle comedy turns around three paranoid men each one with his particular focus.
Blier plays the role of the policeman who decides to break the rules.
Depardieu as always is top notch.
The script sails between the irony and the tragedy. It's a clever surrealistic journey about situations out of control.
Please, let the logical out your mind and be part of this well made film.
Enjoyable from beginning to end.