Convoi exceptionnel (2019)
Directed by Bertrand Blier

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.

Film Synopsis

Foster and Taupin are two men in their mid-sixties who could not be more different.  The first is a successful businessman who feels he is no longer in control of his life.  The second is a homeless man who has very little left to stay alive for.  In the midst of a traffic jam, these two disillusioned individuals meet and strike up an impromptu conversation.  Foster produces a script and insists that he and Taupin are not real people but characters in a film - a film that depicts their life and their death.  In their next scene, the two men have a pre-arranged meeting with a man whom they are supposed to murder.  It is the beginning of a strange odyssey that could end anywhere. The only thing that Foster and Taupin know for certain is that whatever lies in store for them is completely out of their control...