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Feiffer's Little Murders is at once indicated in the opening, though the subway station's gleaming surfaces suggest that even the depths have turned sterile. The bemused loner (Gérard Depardieu) and the uneasy accountant (Michel Serrault) alone on the platform, a stiletto knife between them, "you look like you get odd ideas." (Subsequently located with the blade sticking out of his belly, the little bureaucrat musters a shrug: "It's just a bad moment to cope with.") The protagonist's wife responds to his concern by impatiently throwing the bloody weapon into the dishwasher, the only other person in their high-rise tower is the police inspector (Bernard Blier) who's not in the mood for crime reports. The timorous serial strangler (Jean Carmet) joins them for dinner, having just offed Depardieu's missus. "It's the cement that drives us crazy! The vacant fields! The dehumanized universe surrounding us! The monstrous city with no soul!" Bertrand Blier's sleek slice of frozen Ionesco, an anxious deadpan for figures rattling in vast empty spaces. The characters find themselves as half-hearted hired killers, the customer (Jean Rougerie) puts a hit on himself and screams for help when the startled trio can't quite finish the job, his widow (Geneviève Page) moves in with mourning veil and pistol. (Page is a cultivated reminder of Buñuel, and who later drives by the woods but Carole Bouquet and her Mona Lisa smile.) Torture by Brahms, the flatfoot is led into a scarlet bed and besieged by a string quintet, he comes out blasting. Pastoral escape is the dream, yet once in the country the alienated urbanites cower under blankets and grouse about the humidity. "Nature's an asshole." Blier tips his hat to Monsieur Verdoux for the bleak punchline at the lake, and Tavernier is near with his own burst of despairing Gallic absurdism (Coup de Torchon). With Jean Benguigui, Bernard Crombey, Liliane Rovère, Denise Gence, and Eric Vasberg.
--- Fernando F. Croce |