Director Bertrand Blier died at the age of 85, his family announced in a press release to AFP this Tuesday, January 21, 2025…
Bertrand Blier is dead. The filmmaker, to whom we owe “Les Valseuses” (1974), but also “Buffetfroid” (1979) or “Tenue de soir” (1986), died at the age of 85, his family said to the AFP. Bertrand Blier also won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1979, for “Prepare your handkerchiefs”. In all, more than twenty films were made throughout his 60-year career. Enough to leave a lasting mark in the history of French cinema.
Marked by the legacy of his father, the actor Bernard Blier, and “the Audiard soup” in which he was immersed since childhood, Bertrand Blier was an iconoclastic and provocative director never ceasing to reshuffle the cards of morality, sparing no taboo, film after film. Transgressive, his cinema will first and foremost be a tribute to his two greatest loves: literature and actors. Among them, he notably revealed Gérard Depardieu to the general public by having him appear eight times in his films, Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jean Rochefort, but also several figures from the Splendid troupe, such as Gérard Jugnot in “Calmos”, from 1976 (before the “Bronzés”), Thierry Lhermitte in “La Femme de mon pote” in 1983, Michel Blanc in “Evening outfit” or “Merci la vie” in 1991, Josiane Balasko in “Trop belle pour toi” in 1989 and “Les Acteurs” in 2000 and Christian Clavier in “Convoi exceptional” in 2019. He will also film Isabelle Huppert ( “My friend’s wife”), Alain Delon and Nathalie Baye (“Our story”).
-The best films by Bertrand Blier
Bertrand Blier has many other films to see besides “Les Valseuses” for which he became known and which will even give his name to his production company “Ciné Valse”. Among them, let us also mention his very first film, “If I Were a Spy”, released in 1967, and in which he directed his own father, Bernard Blier, the acclaimed and Oscar-winning “Prepare Your Handkerchiefs”, the excellent ” Beau Père” (1981), the fierce comedy “My Friend's Wife”, marked by the suicide of Patrick Dewaere, “Evening Outfit”, “Trop belle pour toi”, which will receive the grand prize of Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and five Césars in 1990 or even, “Merci la vie” (1991), with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Anouk Grinberg, which he considers his best film. The approach to the 2000s will be more difficult, marking a break with criticism (and undoubtedly good films). However, signing the acclaimed “Le Bruit des glaçons” in 2010, Bertrand Blier would then experience more difficult years with several aborted projects and more mixed receptions.
Bertrand Blier will also be singled out, like many other cinema figures, for signing the column “Don't erase Gérard Depardieu” in 2023, defending the presumption of innocence of Gérard Depardieu, accused of rape, sexual assault and harassment.
