Director Bertrand Blier has left cult lines in abundance in the cinema, but none have left their mark on our lives as much as this one, heard in “Les Valseuses”.
Bertrand Blier died on January 21 at the age of 85. The director of Les Valseuses, Trop belle pour toi or Notre histoire (which earned Alain Delon his only César for Best Actor) is no more, and with him, there is a whole range of lines and words of author (often provocative) who disappears.
Among his dialogues, we could cite the thoughts of Evening Wear (“Evening Wear”)Life IS a prison. And the most terrible of all because to escape you have to pass the weapon to the left“) or the black humor of Cold Buffet (“I present to you the murderer of my wife” followed by a “Very happy” attacked by a police inspector), but no line from his cinema was more famous than this one:
Aren't we okay here?
In Les Valseuses, Jean-Claude (Gérard Depardieu) and Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere) are two thugs and sexual attackers. At the wheel of their stolen DS, they travel the roads, making a living on their own. Along the way, they meet Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou), an employee of a hair salon, a woman like they have never met.
It is during one of their car journeys that Jean-Claude, who is driving, tries to reassure Pierrot, worried about not knowing where they are going. He then releases this legendary line:
-“Aren’t we okay here?”. “And”Pierre simply replies. Then Jean-Claude adds, with the “class” that characterizes him: “Peaceful? Cool? Relaxed on the glans? And we'll get hard when we want to get hard!”
At the time, Les Valseuses appealed to a young audience, seduced by the film's sulphurous reputation, but also its young actors, then unknown, two of whom came from the café-theatre, and the last from the theater and small roles. They all embody a new way of playing, a naturalness, helped by the pen of Blier, who was able to capture the evolution of the French language by post-sixty-eight youth.
Let us point out that a look at the film today, in the post-MeToo era, can only notice the multiplication of sexual assaults during the feature film, with a representation of the attacked finally becoming consenting. Upon its release, however, the film was a public tidal wave, totaling 5,726,257 admissions thanks to word of mouth.
Bertrand Blier will not calm the controversies, quite the contrary, by releasing two years after Les Valseuses the film Calmos with Jean Rochefort and Jean-Pierre Marielle, which will confirm its rejection by feminist groups and associations.
