Cutlets (Bertrand Blier, 2003) (Patreon)

In deciding to catch up with some old Cannes titles, I've initially gone with some films that were severely lambasted at the time of their world premiere. It can often be instructive to see what sorts of films cause this particular subset -- the Cannes audience -- to rankle, since most of the time these films, whatever their flaws, will at least be auteurist efforts exhibiting some style and ideas. As far as Les Côtelettes is concerned, I should note that this is the first film I've ever watched by Bertrand Blier. Starting off with a film maudit might have been ill-advised, since Blier has at least two widely admired works (Too Beautiful for You and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs). Why start at the bottom?

Did Cutlets benefit from low expectations? I can't say that this film stoked any desire to drop everything and plunge headlong into Blier's filmography. But . . . I kind of liked it? Granted, this is a particular form of satire that has no place in our world any longer, and I strongly suspect even in 2003 it was well past its sell-by date. Then again, Cutlets looks and feels like a much older film, something from the era of Wertmüller, Beineix, and Percy Adlon. By today's standards this is a film that's overtly sexist, blithely racist, and almost casually homophobic. It represents a decidedly passé notion of the transgressive.

But then, I think that's sort of the point. In adapting his stage play, Blier abandons all unities of time and space, jump-cutting between semi-random locations mid-scene and occasionally mid-sentence. (It's like a more causal, less austere version of what Heinz Emigholz has been doing lately.) And within this unreal world, Blier unleashes an absurdist narrative driven by two fairly contemptible people. Grison (Philippe Noiret) is interrupted at dinner by a stranger, Potier (Michel Bouquet), with the stated purpose of antagonizing him. Grison is established as a wealthy leftist, Potier as a lower-class right-winger. But this Libe vs. Figaro premise is a red herring.

The men discover that they both employ the same housekeeper, Nacifa (Farida Rahouadj), a middle-aged Algerian woman for whom they both have the hots. Amidst the men's high-flown rhetoric, we see that they both see Nacifa as an object, an opportunity for France to score some fourth-quarter colonialism and, as it were, plant their respective flags. Blier makes it clear that any difference between Grison and Potier is merely cosmetic. They are both revanchist where it really counts.

Cutlets is the sort of bitter drawing-room farce that characterized Buñuel's French period. The rather idiotic conclusion, which finds the old men taking turns aggressively buggering Death (Catherine Heigel), is not so far removed from some of Jean-Claude Carrière's more vulgar conceits. Blier, however, suggests that the rot of French culture runs deeper than the bourgeoisie, or that perhaps those class distinctions have been displaced by something more primal. The dehumanization of immigrants seems to be the Republic's great equalizer. 

In its willingness -- nay, enthusiasm -- to parade objectionable ideas in the interest of exposing their decadence, Cutlets resembles a more upscale version of Jean Genet's theater of brutality. Truth is, I'm not sure works like The Maids or The Screens could be mounted today, were it not for their canonical status. Paradoxically, as the world grows uglier, we find it more and more necessary to mind our manners.

FINAL NOTE: I have mostly seen the film's title rendered in French, as there is quite a bit of disagreement with exactly how to translate Les Côtelletes. I went with Cutlets, because that's how the word was translated in the subtitles when it was spoken. Letterboxd and TMDb are going with The Chops. And one review rendered it as The Lambchops. The latter would be nice, as it would continue the accidental barnyard theme in my recent viewing (Goat, Pig, and Taurus). But I'm sticking with Cutlets. Sorry.