BUFFET FROID (Cold Cuts, 1979) *1/2 French absurdist one-trick pony variation on the children's game of "Opposite Day." Killers should be invited in for a glass of wine, hired to hit oneself, off-duty cops are more interested in being complicitous than investigatory, cute at first it simply goes on repeating itself. I had high hopes when Gérard Depardieu is immediately identified in the subway as someone who likely holds "odd thoughts," but the writers never combine such psychological phenomenae in a manner inclined to get much deeper than that. In fact Gérard manages to neither set himself apart from the cast with the strangeness of his thoughts nor communicate much beyond the obvious reality that he's a big guy with a great smile in a film shot in cool and tasteful locations by Bertrand Blier. Blier is also better as the cop, who serves wine on every occasion. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be odd behavior or not. Films like this are fodder for the vulgar who claim that nothing ever happens in French productions.
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