Ménage

Antoine and Monique sit in a bar at night shouting at each other: no money, no work, no hope. A man called Bob interrupts from the next table, pulls out a roll of cash and takes them both on. Bob is a thief and teaches them to burgle houses. But money is not what he is after. What he wants is Antoine, and before long he says so. The film builds a triangle and then knocks every expected corner of it out of place. As Antoine's resistance dissolves, the argument stops being about who desires whom and becomes about who belongs to whom. The woman has the least say in the arrangement at the end, and the film does not correct that. Bertrand Blier wrote and directed. Gerard Depardieu plays Bob, Michel Blanc plays Antoine, Miou-Miou plays Monique. It competed at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, where Michel Blanc won best actor; until then he had been known as a comic performer. Blier's manner here is built on provocation: the dialogue is coarse, the scenes are goading, and the film never lets the audience settle. Who it is for: anyone who likes eighties French cinema and comedy that makes you uncomfortable. Who it is not for: anyone looking for subtlety. What it means to say about gender and desire is never tied off, and the last half hour is deliberately ugly.