Trop Belle Pour Toi

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Blier's tragi-comedy is possibly his most accomplished film although not everyone will feel comfortable with his non-linear interweaving and overlapping approach to the narrative in which Gérard Depardieu plays Bernard, a well-to-do BMW dealer who falls in love with his rather dumpy middle-aged secretary, Colette (Josiane Balasko), despite being married to a beautiful woman (Carole Boquet). François Cluzet completes the main cast as Colette's husband.

Blier treats the fraught scenario of with mock seriousness (greatly helped by the use of Schubert's music) investing the scenario with much good humour.  But underlying the farce is a touching account of a middle-aged male floundering in the vortex of love and desire and its disruptive effects on the bourgeois values which form the substance of his life.

Phillipe Rousselot's fluid camera and writer-director Blier's careful mise-en-scène work together to realize the multi-faceted structure that has an essentially theatrical feel to it as it economically depicts the trajectory of the liaison. We get to see a lot of French films about marital infidelity of one stripe or another but Trop Bell Pour Toi is a refreshingly original take on the familiar theme.

Available from: Umbrella Entertainment

 

Want something different?