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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305037224
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 6305037221
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Pan & Scan
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Release Date: August 12, 1998
Running Time: 95 minutes
Sales Rank: 24968
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: 1979
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Playing murder as farce is nothing new for French filmmakers, but Bertrand Blier brings the concept to a new level in Buffet Froid, a bleak, ironic black comedy. An unemployed man is enmeshed in a nightmarish situation that plays itself out with unapologetic illogic: he falls in with shady characters like his wife's killer, a corrupt police chief, and a young beauty who is definitely not what she seems. Like all Blier romps (most notably the scatological Going Places and Ménage), Buffet Froid is definitely not for everyone, and Gérard Depardieu fans might feel especially cheated by his passive performance. But if your own taste runs to the surrealistic dreamscapes of Luis Buñuel's final films, then Blier's cheerfully amoral tale is worth seeing. --Kevin Filipski
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Buffet Froid
Blier's death-obsessed, surrealist black comedy features the ever-prolific Depardieu as blasé drifter Alphonse, who--desensitized to violence--wanders a nightmarish urban landscape with his two unlikely allies, a cop (played by the director's father) and a serial killer. Blier, who won an Oscar for his "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs," invokes every noir cliché in the book, only to subvert them all in arch Bunuelian fashion. Bleak, morbid, and bizarre, this is a murder mystery with no tidy solutions ... Read More
Rating: - A buñuelian film noir
In the best tradition of the sarcasticc, ironic and devasting spirit of Luis Buñuel's filmography (and obviously a Billy Wilder's touch), the film runs by its own with a masterful plot brilliant travels and remarkable performances.
Blier made a film absolutely free of any kind of convencionalism, intelligent humor, clever sense of absurd and mesmerizing laberyntic journey into the underworld, the acid view about a policeman who decides breaking the rules together with two men who are under a ... Read More
Rating: - Death Warmed Up
"Buffet Froid" is a thriller without thrills, a murder mystery with no solution, and a comedy that's only funny to a certain type of person. When you add all these ingredients up, you get one heck of a surrealist piece. It is a movie many people will hate after just one viewing. It is bleak, morbid, ruthless, and bizarre in its apparent lack of concern for plot or realism. When I watched in my high-school French class, there wasn't much laughter, though there was a lot of "What??" and "Oh, my God..." ... Read More
Rating:  - comedy's hard to do...black comedy even tougher
I'm a fan of "Get Out Your Hankerchiefs" so assumed this offering from the same director would at least be enjoyable. I kept waiting for something funny to be done or said. I waited and waited. "The Trouble With Harry" or "Dr.Strangelove" are both great black comedies. This strives to be in their league but falls way short of the mark. It's possible that something's lost in the translation because to give the subtitles a dry read is to only further understand why French people revere Jerry Lewis-silliness ... Read More
Rating:  - I gotta dissent....
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE French films, Theater of the Absurd, Surrealism, Dada, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet. I think all the actors in this film are tops, especially Bernard Blier. But this movie is like a high school exercise in all of the above styles - it's shallow, predictable & not at all imaginative. The only thing that saves it for me is Michel Serrault's cameo scene in the beginning. Maybe I would liked it more if I were dependent on sub-titles.
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