For a film that embraces Alice In Wonderland logic it's appropriate that it starts as a man (Alphonse Tram) descends into a hole in the ground and by extension into a subterranean nightmare. Having reached the train level of La Defense metro station Tram (Gerard Depardieu) ignores the acres of empty space and chooses a seat alongside the only other person there (Michel Serrault) pursuing him and engaging him in surreal conversation. At one point Tram produces a flick knife, offers it to Serrault who declines it and places it on an adjacent seat. Moments later it has disappeared despite there being no other person present. La Defense is a terminus so when a train appears, Serrault boards it and it moves off in the same direction it travelled to get there (in other words into the buffers) this is confirmation that we are in an unreal world which is perhaps a figment of Tram's imagination.A little later as Tram leaves the station he finds Serrault slumped against a wall wearing a knife that turns out to be the knife that Tram offered to Serrault which disappeared mysteriously. Serrault is philosophical about his condition and urges Tram to take his money for which he will have no further use. Tram returns home - a high-rise apartment block in which he and his wife WERE the only tenants but now, his wife tells him, there is a new tenant. Tram pays a social call and learns that the new tenant is Inspector Morvandieu (Bernard Blier, the director's father) who is not too concerned about a stiff in the subway. Then Tram's wife turns up dead and the killer (Jean Carmet) visits Tram to confess his guilt and ask for a souvenir of the dead woman. All three men share a drink when a fourth man appears, and tells Tram he knows that Tram killed Serrault, the Inspector cautions him against blackmail and the murderer asks for the new arrival's sympathy on the grounds that Tram has just lost his wife. But they needn't have worried, the new arrival merely wishes to hire Tram to kill someone else. And so it goes. All hands play this dead straight which strengthens the nightmare aspect. Eventually the fourth man is killed and his wife has already packed and is anxious to go with the other three. In a reference to Minnelli's Some Came Running she asks Tram if he ever removes his coat (he hadn't up to that point, just as 'Bama' Dillert (Dean Martin) never removed his hat in the Minnelli film). There's also an aside in which Tram and Morvandieu visit a very Charles Addams house where a classical concert is taking place. Morvandieu speaks of his aversion to classical music whereupon the hostess takes him to a bedroom, urges him to get into bed on the grounds that he isn't looking well then summons five very Charles Addams characters to play Brahms with a nod to Francois Sagan with the question 'Do you like Brahms?'. Morvandieu promptly shoots the entire quintet and later says his wife was a violinist who drove him crazy with her practicing. Watching this film is like peeling an onion soaed in lsd; layer after layer more surreal yet normal than the last. After the darkness of the urban jungle it finally emerges into full daylight for the final nightmares. The only way to approach it is on its own terms which will bring its own rewards.
Review of Buffet Froid
