Film Review
Nine years after
Le Bruit
des glaçons (2010), in which an alcoholic writer befriends
the cancer that has designs on killing him, Bertrand Blier returns to inflict
on us an even more bizarre flight fancy - a surreal comedy in which a chalk-and-cheese
duo wake up to the fact that they are characters in a film, their entire
lives consisting of a series of improbable episodes over which they have
absolutely no control.
Convoi exceptionnel (a.k.a.
Heavy Duty) is Blier's twentieth
feature and in it this most iconoclastic of French filmmakers brazenly weaves
together elements of his earlier films - most notably
Les Valseuses (1974),
Buffet froid (1979),
Merci la vie (1991) and
Les Acteurs (2000) - to create an
over-spiced cinematic ghoulash that will doubtless amuse the director's fans
whilst leaving the wider cinema-going public struggling to make any sense
of it.
What looks at first sight to be a jaded, bitterly ironic commentary on the
process of filmmaking today gradually comes to appear like something far
more interesting - a grimly pessimistic allegory on modern life. As
you watch it, you can't help increasingly identifying with the two central
protagonists as they are sent down a predetermined path with seemingly no
capacity to act as autonomous beings. Any alternative course they may
wish to follow - even something as trivial as ordering a drink - is prohibited
by the script which they are forced to follow to the letter. The argument
of free will versus predestination has vexed philosophers for centuries,
and the conclusion that the 79-year-old Blier appears to have reached is
that we are all merely actors in a great cosmic drama, unconsciously acting
and speaking in accordance with a script supplied by we know not whom.
Now into his eighth collaboration with Blier, Gérard Depardieu is
effectively partnered with the ever-popular Christian Clavier, reforming
a double act that proved to be immensely successful in
Astérix &
Obélix contre César (1999) and its sequel
Astérix &
Obélix: Mission Cleopatra (2002). Both actors are cast
according to type, Depardieu looking as comfortable in the role of the grouchy
vagrant as Clavier is as the high-powered bourgeois capitalist. Both
actors are well-served by Blier's typically mordant dialogue, their prickly
rapport being one of the film's main assets.
In films ranging from
Les Valseuses to
Trop belle pour toi (1989)
the free-spirited Depardieu has proven to be ideally suited for Blier's idiosyncratic
brand of absurdist cinema. What is perhaps more surprising is how easily
mainstream golden boy Clavier fits into the same misshapen groove, giving
an extra hint of malice to the film's darkly mischievous humour. There
are definite shades of Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot here, with
Clavier and Depardieu subconsciously offering themselves up as wry modern
counterparts for Vladimir and Estragon, with the nondescript urban backdrop
(Brussels would you believe) being every bit as vacant and oppressive as
the setting of Beckett's famous play.
Convoi exceptionnel allows Bertrand Blier ample opportunity to revisit
some of his favourite themes and rerun some of his old jokes, with an evident
lack of awareness that societal attitudes to little things like misogyny
have moved on in the intervening years. Whilst much of humour feels
a tad dated and Blier's penchant for provocation has dimmed somewhat, the
film carries its author's unmistakable signature and is as gloriously truculent
and unpredictable as any film that came before it from the Bertrand Blier
stable of grandstanding auteur lunacy.
Admittedly, the metafilm premise has been handled perhaps with more deftness
by other directors - Robert Guédiguian's
À l'attaque (2000) and Wes
Craven's
New Nightmare (1994)
spring readily to mind - but Blier gives it a good run for its money, taking
the concept to the limits of absurdity with a characteristic lack of restraint.
Whilst this flagrant over-stretching of a good idea pays off in some scenes,
it leads to a certain amount of gratuitous silliness in others, and this
has garnered the film some pretty damning reviews from some quarters.
Convoi exceptionnel may not be vintage Blier but it is a reasonably
successful attempt by this diehard auteur to distil the essence of his oeuvre
- the caustic humour, the existential themes and unsettling visual poetry
- into one totally unhinged film. Whether you enjoy it or not depends
on whether you reckon Bertrand Blier is now totally dépassé
or remains a prophet of our time.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.