General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Buffet Froid

Buffet froid is a 1979 French black comedy written and directed by Bertrand Blier, in which an unemployed Parisian, a compulsive murderer, and a homicidal police inspector drift through a deserted, dehumanized city in a chain of absurdist killings. It was Blier's fifth feature film, made after the success of Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez vos mouchoirs !), and it won the 1980 César for Best Original or Adapted Screenplay.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Bertrand Blier (1939–2025), his fifth feature¹
Release	France, 19 December 1979³
Runtime	89 minutes (Larousse lists 1 h 35)³^•⁴
Principal cast	Gérard Depardieu (Alphonse Tram), Bernard Blier (Inspector Morvandieu), Jean Carmet (the assassin), with Michel Serrault, Carole Bouquet, and Geneviève Page⁵
Key crew	Jean Penzer (cinematography), Claudine Merlin (editing), Théobald Meurisse (production design), Philippe Sarde (music), Alain Sarde (producer)⁵
Awards	César 1980, Best Screenplay, Original or Adaptation; three further nominations (cinematography, production design, editing)⁶
Reception	A box-office failure on release, later a cult film¹

Spoilers

Plot

The story begins in the deserted corridors of the Paris Métro, where Alphonse Tram, an unemployed and somewhat capricious man, strikes up a conversation with a stranger and bores him with his stories of joblessness and his urges to kill. Shortly afterward he finds the same man dying, stabbed with Alphonse's own knife, though Alphonse has no memory of committing the act. He returns home to a newly built tower block that is almost entirely empty, and tells his wife about the encounter; she prefers to talk about a new neighbor who has moved in.¹

When Alphonse tries to report the crime to police inspector Morvandieu, the inspector refuses to listen. Later Alphonse's wife is murdered, and her killer, a timid murderer played by Jean Carmet, comes to apologize and befriends him. The two recruit Morvandieu, who has an impulse to kill whenever he hears a Brahms quintet, and the three become drinking and murdering companions as the killings succeed one another.⁷^•² A further stranger, who witnessed everything in the Métro, then recruits Alphonse for a killing of his own, and the man he is asked to shoot turns out to be someone in search of his own death.³

Production

Blier worked on the screenplay for a long time, and no financier wanted the project. Only after the success of Préparez vos mouchoirs was he able to impose it on hesitant producers.⁸ The film was produced by Alain Sarde through Sara Films, with co-production by the television channel Antenne 2, and distributed by Splendor Films.⁵^•³ Jean Penzer was the director of photography, Claudine Merlin the editor, Théobald Meurisse the production designer, and Philippe Sarde composed the score; the film also uses music by Brahms and Schubert.⁵^•⁸

Filming took place in the Paris suburbs and beyond, at Courbevoie, Créteil, and Puteaux in the Hauts-de-Seine and Val-de-Marne departments, and at Treffort in Isère.³ Blier cast his own father, Bernard Blier, as the inspector.⁹

Style and themes

The film is set in a surreal world of urban alienation, senseless violence, and black humor. The Métro and streets are deserted, the suburban high-rises uninhabited, the nights sad and damp, and the countryside hostile; Arte's program notes describe this glacial, post-apocalyptic universe as the setting for a macabre comedy in which gratuitous assassinations succeed one another in an endless round of death, with characters given no psychological characterization.¹ The Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers called it Blier's sparsest film, comparing its narrative freedom and darkness to the theater of Eugène Ionesco and noting its rejection of any temporal dimension.⁸

Pierre Beylot, professor of film studies at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne, published a 2017 study of the film with Éditions Atlande, placing it in the France of the "between-two-Mays" after May 1968 and reading it as a break with the more farcical provocation of Blier's earlier films. He traces its influences from Luis Buñuel to the parodic crime film and the theater of the absurd of Samuel Beckett and Ionesco, and reads its murderous chain reaction as a disenchanted vision of society, distant from the transformative ideologies of the 1970s.¹⁰

Reception and legacy

After the popular success of Les Valseuses and Préparez vos mouchoirs !, Buffet froid met with a public failure, in contrast with the cult status the film enjoys today.¹ French critics were noticeably more enthusiastic about the film than their British or American counterparts.¹¹ Le Monde described it as "a cheerful nightmare" when it opened in France.² At the 1980 César Awards it won Best Screenplay, Original or Adaptation for Blier, and was nominated for Best Cinematography (Jean Penzer), Best Production Design (Théobald Meurisse), and Best Editing (Claudine Merlin).⁶

The film was screened in the COLCOA Classics program of the 2011 COLCOA French Film Festival in Hollywood, in a retrospective focused on Blier, and has been released on home video in the United States by Kino Lorber.² The film scholar Sue Harris, author of French Film Directors: Bertrand Blier (2001), has described Buffet froid as Blier's most coherent film and a good introduction to his work for newcomers.¹¹ Blier died in January 2025.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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