Emmanuel Macron pays tribute to Bertrand Blier, filmmaker with “the free and scathing imprint”

The Élysée paid tribute to director Bertrand Blier, who died on Monday at 85. The Presidency of the Republic describes him as “giant of French cinema”. Director of “Cold Buffet”, “evening hold” or “Les Valseuses”, Bertrand Blier “marked his free and scathing imprint for five decades”, wrote Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron in a statement published this Wednesday.

“With his irony, his sense of provocative verb, his gaze of inconvenient freedom, he had offered our imagination past films in legend,” they added. “It belonged to the great French tradition of temperament painters, between misanthropy and tenderness. »»

Nonconformist or symbol of another time

A ceremony open to the public will be organized Wednesday January 29 at 10:30 am in the Saint-Roch church, in Paris, which is traditionally the church of the personalities of the show, with its chaplaincy of artists. It will be followed by an burial in intimacy in the Montmartre cemetery, announced her son Léonard at AFP (Agency France Presse).

Anti -conformist and irreverent for some, provocative and symbol of another time for others, the name of Blier will remain above all associated with that of Gérard Depardieu, whose career he took off in 1974 in “Les Valseuses”, alongside Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou. Subversive film that has become cult, “Les Valseuses” is also marked by a gravelly humor that shocked at the time. It is in this film that Depardieu lets go of this tirade: “We are not well?” Peaceful, fresh, relaxed from the glans. And we will bandage when we want to bandage ”.

His work now has criticisms for his misogyny or the way he stages male domination. In recent years, some of its actresses like Miou-Miou or Brigitte Fossey have sometimes said that they have undergone its gravelly humor as a humiliation or an aggression. Director of around thirty films, Blier will remain as a popular filmmaker, who could bring together six million spectators in the 1970s with “Les Valseuses” and another three million in the 1980s with “Evening dress”, where Depardieu and Miou -Miou are running this time with Michel Blanc.