Buffet Froid 4K 1979 Ultra HD 2160p

Bernard Blier is known for never being afraid to shock the audience by rubbing their noses in a phenomenon he captures with astonishing precision—often while it’s still just an unspoken premonition. In a world where murder has long become a commonplace part of daily life, and crime reports are something of a mandatory accompaniment to the news, with this film the director appeals—perhaps—not even to our emotions, but to our subconscious and our nightmares, knowing that appealing to reason has yielded zero results over the past few thousand years. To this end, he constructs a plot that is grotesque to the point of utter absurdity, not even bothering to connect the murders that follow one after another with any logic. Instead, he gives the characters dialogue and offhand remarks that deserve the utmost attention (the screenplay won a César Award). The police commissioner (Bernard Blier, the director’s father in real life), in particular, says that criminals should not be put in prison, as they might infect normal people. Watch this bitter drama closely—it’s slightly stylized as a “black” comedy. It is full of satire and the wittiest sarcasm, delivered with French ease and elegant—yet at times simply devastating—irony. Listen closely to the dialogue that accompanies “the dynamics of murder in a horrific, python-like world where nothing human remains”: “When I kill a woman, it seems to me as if I hear a bird’s cry.” Naturally, the director’s style didn’t come out of nowhere—one need only recall the prose of Boris Vian or Raymond Queneau. Critics call Blier an antisocial hooligan, but is it worth blaming the mirror?

User Review

Although several films in Bertrand Blier’s career could be considered cult classics, “Buffet Froid” is undoubtedly one of the best works by the controversial French director. Having risen to fame in the 1970s with such striking films as *The Waltzers* and *Get Your Handkerchiefs Ready*, both starring the ever-present Gérard Depardieu, Bertrand Blier simultaneously captured the attention of contemporary audiences while provoking outrage from various censorship committees, which demanded restrictions on the young French director’s films—which were quite daring for their time—whose content was, at times, as explicit as their themes were absurd overall.

Blié couldn’t care less about such remarks and continued to do things his own way, making films exactly as he pleased. The director’s stubbornness—he wasn’t afraid to challenge public morality—resonated widely not only in his homeland but also far beyond its borders. Even the mostly prim and proper members of the Academy could not resist the charm of the French maverick’s films, awarding the black comedy *Get Your Handkerchiefs Ready* an Oscar in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category.

The director’s penchant for biting, provocative black humor reaches its peak in “Buffet Froid.” It is one of the darkest, most pitch-black comedies in the history of cinema, and at the same time a unique tribute to American film noir, with its unpredictable plot twists, contract killings, and femme fatales.

The film’s screenplay grabs your attention from the very first minutes, and its subsequent plot twists border on genius. Gérard Depardieu plays an unemployed Parisian who, after striking up a conversation with a stranger on the subway one night, finds the same man, some time later, lying on the ground with a knife in his stomach. The funny thing is that the knife belongs to Alphonse (Depardieu’s character), but he has no idea how it ended up in his conversation partner’s stomach just a few minutes later. The oddities don’t end there: the next day, someone kills Alphonse’s wife, and a new tenant moves into the entrance of his apartment building—none other than Police Inspector Morvindier (played by the director’s father, Bernard Blier). But don’t expect any decisive action from this character: instead of investigating murders and catching criminals, the law enforcement officer will personally destroy evidence and have a nightcap with the murderers, justifying this by saying that criminals have no place in prison—that they shouldn’t be corrupting the innocent inmates with their bad example.

A mysterious incident on the late-night subway will serve merely as a prologue to a chain of wild, nightmarish misunderstandings, where the number of corpses—or, in Blier’s words, “Buffet Froid”—will increase in direct proportion to the appearance of new characters on screen. At times, it might even seem as though the actors will finally take off their soulless “masks” and have a good laugh at what’s happening, but no—that doesn’t happen. Blie’s characters are clinically cold and Frenchly reserved, even in that ultra-violent scene where Depardieu’s character, as if nothing had happened, extends a warm welcome to his wife’s killer, responding to the killer’s candid confession of the murder with: “Never mind, forget about it—and if you don’t forget, I’ll show you the door.”

In Blier’s film, a satire on modern society is plain to see—not only on the so-called “wolves in uniform,” but also on criminals who are often not maniacs at all, but simply losers who have become entangled in the cycle of life. The film’s main killer shows the viewer almost no moral conflict—he calmly strangles women by the dozen, claiming that this is the only way he can hear the natural silence and the birds singing, yet at the same time he’s afraid to wander the streets at night, demanding that Depardieu’s character walk him home.

Unlike the director’s previous films, “Buffet Froid” is the very picture of decorum and propriety. Here (with the exception of two fleeting bedroom scenes) there is not the slightest hint of pornography, or, God forbid, the theme of child molestation. In this landmark film, Blier places the emphasis on His Majesty Humor, thereby proving to all his detractors that his talent as a director extends far beyond—pardon the expression—showing naked men and women.

It’s worth noting that the enjoyment of “Buffet Froid” isn’t limited to just dark, black humor. In the twisted, disjointed dialogues—which at first glance seem completely empty—very deep, intelligent thoughts sometimes slip through, as intended by the author. But will the viewer want to listen to them when such chaos is unfolding on screen?

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (84.7 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Info Audio

#French: FLAC 1.0

Info Subtitles