Too Beautiful For You

Bertrand Blier's (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Beau Pere) latest film begins with a promising premise: Bernard Barthelmy (Gerard Depardieu), is a rich car salesman, comfortably married to a beautiful wife (Carole Bouquet) who sets in motion the salivary glands of all the wonderful couple's male acquaintances. When Bernard meets Colette Chevassus (Josiane Balasko), a temp secretary who is rather overweight and quite the plain Jane, Bernard falls in love. In trying to explain his feelings to Colette, Bernard says his wife Florence is perhaps "too beautiful." It's an interesting theme that rapidly gets lost. For reasons perhaps only understood by Blier, the film literally comes unstuck in time and space. Interior monologues become full-blown scenes with husband, wife, and mistress all speaking to one another. In mid-conversation, the shot will change to a different angle, and suddenly the table that the speakers are sitting at is no longer the same table. Flashbacks and flash-forwards become inseparable, and characters whom we haven't previously met come into a room and talk directly to the camera. Is it art? I don't think so, and I very much doubt that your patrons will think so, either. It's pretentious garbage from the not officially recognized genre of French-talk-and-eat-and-talk-and-eat movies. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)