Ménage

If you're renting Ménage for your evening movie, you're probably expecting exactly what the title promises. Good news, you'll get it! In this French flick, Michel Blanc and Miou-Miou play an unhappily married couple who get drawn into a darker life by thief Gérard Depardieu. Not only does Gérard introduce them to the thrill of robbing houses, but he also manages to get both of them in bed.

I don't know if this movie was taken seriously back in 1986, but watching it now feels a bit silly. It's very sensationalistic, almost like it's making fun of the story. They never get arrested for their robberies, and in one scene, they don't even get in trouble when they're caught because the lady of the house decides she'd rather sleep with Gérard than press charges. In another scene, Gérard and Miou-Miou are caught in bed by Michel, and all three of them have a conversation without any cease-and-desist, if you know what I mean. If you think this tongue-in-cheek humor is funny, you'll probably get a kick out of this one. If you're not in the mood for it, you might want to wait until you feel like something silly.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to sex scenes, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

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.

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.

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.