Why So Blu?

Merci la vie (Indicator Limited Edition Blu-ray Review)

Writer/Director Bertrand Blier wastes no time letting us know that Merci la vie will play by its own rules. Joëlle (Anouk Grinberg), wearing a bridal gown, is assaulted and left in the road. Camille (Charlotte Gainsbourg) happens upon her while pushing a shopping cart loaded with fish as seagulls circle nearby. That uncomfortable overlap between comedy and cruelty never goes away for the film’s runtime. The two women take off together and start turning their anger on the men they meet.

 

 

Film ★★☆☆☆

For a little while, the movie resembles a vicious road comedy. Then the road all but disappears. Joëlle has been infected by a doctor hoping to profit from the disease, Camille begins testing the limits of her own sexuality, and both women somehow walk into the history of Camille’s family. Her parents appear at different ages. The German occupation pushes into the present. Film crews turn up, disappear, and occasionally seem responsible for what we are watching. Even the photography refuses to stay put, moving between color, sepia, black-and-white, and other tinted variations without offering a dependable explanation.

Don’t try to arrange everything into a literal timeline. It’s a dead end. Blier moves through associations of sex leading to illness, illness to death, death to war, and war to the images cinema has given us.

Grinberg throws herself into Joëlle without making her agreeable. She’s always switching from furious, to ridiculous, and heartbreaking before any given scene is over. Gainsbourg works quietly, absorbing everything, and gradually stops being the inexperienced tagalong she first presents herself as. 

Michel Blanc and Jean Carmet play younger and older versions of her father, with Carmet bringing a tired sadness that earned him a César. Annie Girardot receives a similarly painful moment involving age and a career slipping away, while Gérard Depardieu is thoroughly repellent as the doctor using Joëlle for his own advancement. 

Philippe Rousselot’s photography gives the film a strange visual beauty, and Claudine Merlin’s editing keeps it moving even when logic is nonexistent.

Blier was accused of misogyny throughout his career, and Merci la vie puts into question if those charges are answered. Camille and Joëlle are allowed to be aggressive, sexual, selfish, and destructive, all qualities his earlier films handed to men. On the flip side, they’re hit, exposed, infected, and repeatedly turned into objects of spectacle. 

Anouk Grinberg’s later comments about Blier and her unhappiness with the film make those scenes even more difficult to brush aside as simple provocation. The conflict is built into the experience of watching Merci la vie now. 

Some parts are inspired, yet others are carelessly self-indulgent and needlessly cruel.

Video ★★★★☆

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Clarity/Detail: Facial texture, clothing, production design and background architecture are rendered with impressive definition.

Depth: Dimensionality is strongest in daylight exteriors and compositions with substantial foreground-to-background separation.

Black Levels: Dark material remains appropriately weighty while preserving information in shadowed streets, interiors and night photography. Blacks generally avoid looking either crushed or prematurely grey.

Color Reproduction: The constantly changing palette is reproduced confidently. Sepia, amber, greenish passages, cool near-monochrome imagery and more conventional color sequences each maintain their intended identity.

Flesh Tones: Complexions follow the film’s deliberately unstable grading. 

Noise/Artifacts: This transfer gives the grain and shifting photographic styles plenty of room.

Audio ★★★★☆

Audio Format(s): French LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)

Subtitles: English

Dynamics: The track has respectable breathing room when music or effects enter. The contrasts are controlled and consistent with an early-1990s dialogue-led production.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: There are no assigned overhead channels.

Surround Sound Presentation: Native playback is concentrated across the left and right speakers.

Dialogue Reproduction: Speech remains intelligible and properly prioritized.

Extras ★★★★☆

Limited edition of 6,000 copies (4,000 4K UHDs and 2,000 Blu-rays) for the UK and US

Bertrand Blier on ‘Merci la vie’ (2004, 24 mins): the writer-director takes an in-depth look back at his award-winning film: This archival interview with Bertrand Blier has him discussing the screenplay’s beginnings, experiences that entered the story, the film’s preparation and his combination of French filmmaking traditions with an interest in American cinema.

Location report (1990, 3 mins): Extract from the French television programme 12-13, featuring footage of a night shoot and an interview with Blier: Dates from 1990 and combines footage of a nighttime shoot with a brief Blier interview.

Original theatrical trailer

Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials

Script gallery: original screenplay

Limited edition exclusive 40-page booklet with new writing on the film by Sue Harris, archival interviews with writer-director Bertrand Blier, and actors Charlotte Gainsbourg and Anouk Grinberg, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits

Summary ★★★☆☆

Indicator has done right by a difficult film. The Blu-ray is an exceptionally 1080p rendition of the 4K restoration. The supplements are not enormous in number, but combined provide meaningful context.