493 Buffet Froid

[MichaelB]

(Bertrand Blier, 1979, 94 mins)
Release date: 17 August 2026
Limited Edition 4K UHD (World premiere)

Pre-order here: UK 4K UHD/UK Blu-ray/US 4K UHD/US Blu-ray

Too farcical to be a thriller, yet too surreal to be a farce, Bertrand Blier’s wonderfully absurd Buffet froid follows Alphonse Tram (Gérard Depardieu, Stavisky…), an unemployed man who befriends anyone who will listen to him, before, often, murdering them by mistake.

After Tram’s wife is murdered, he befriends his new neighbour, Inspector Morvandieu (Bernard Blier, the director’s father), and his wife’s killer (Jean Carmet, Black and White in Color) as they hop from misadventure to misadventure, often in bizarrely liminal spaces, leaving behind a trail of accidental victims.

Buffet froid was a financial flop in 1979, but has since gathered a die-hard cult reputation as, per Time Out, ‘a cherishably Buñuelian depiction of the far-from-discreet crimes of the bourgeoisie’.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD SPECIAL FEATURES

• 4K HDR restoration from the original negative
• 4K (2160p) UHD presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original mono audio
• Bertrand Blier on ‘Buffet froid’ (2019): the writer-director takes an in-depth look back at his cult film
• Les Rendez-vous du dimanche: ‘Buffet froid’ (1979): extract from the French television programme, featuring Blier and cast members Gérard Depardieu, Bernard Blier, and Jean Carmet discussing the film at the time of its release, alongside other guests
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials
• Script gallery: complete dialogue and continuity script
• New and improved English translation subtitles
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with new writing on the film by Sue Harris, archival interviews with writer-director Bertrand Blier, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• World premiere on 4K UHD
• Limited edition of 6,000 copies (4,000 4K UHDs and 2,000 Blu-rays) for the UK and US
• All features subject to change

#PHILE493U
BBFC cert: 12
REGION FREE
EAN: 5060697925463

[domino harvey]

If you’ve never seen a Blier film, this is the one to start with to see if he’s your thing!

Buffet froid (Bertrand Blier 1979)
Writer-director Blier toys with conventional narrative causality in this very Bunuelian satire in which Gerard Depardieu’s possible killer befriends his wife’s murderer and a laconic police inspector. The joke here is that characters react more or less in opposition to what they’d normally do in a given situation. So if a rapist and murderer breaks into your house and molests you, only to discover he’s made a mistake upon realizing you are a man, you invite him to have a drink with you and calmly give him directions on how to find a woman living alone nearby. And so on. This movie is a quite funny and dark goof on day-to-day mores and how they are represented in popular fiction, and I don’t think what Blier is doing here holds up to any kind of real scrutiny as social commentary. When one of the characters gives a speech defending his actions and blaming the “inhumanity” of modern society, I immediately thought of how Chabrol would include a shot of a given novel in his films if he wanted critics to make a connection to it in their write-ups. Looking at contemporary reviews, it’s amazing how many critics took the bait and didn’t think for like five seconds about it to realize that the character’s argument is a crock of shit that the film goes out of its way to undermine in the last twenty minutes. I think that level of playfulness is what elevates this beyond mere experiment into a success. Here’s a film that constantly surprised and delighted me, where I could not possibly guess what would happen next over and over, and which wisely didn’t overstay its welcome. Highly recommended.