Too Beautiful for You (1990)

In the films of Bertrand Blier, love is a virus that sends its victims on a feverish fling of impulsive passion before leaving them abandoned and alone. The difference in Too Beautiful for You is an empathy and warmth rarely seen in Blier's often cynical work. Gérard Depardieu is the successful car dealer ambushed by Cupid when plain-looking secretary Josiane Balasko clumps into the office. It seems to defy all reason, how this frumpy, dumpy woman with eyes that caress lures Depardieu from elegant wife Carole Bouquet, a woman so poised and perfect she's more trophy than trophy wife, but love follows no reason. Neither does Blier's film, which dances through fantasies and flashbacks with the abandon of a daydream. It makes for a confusing story but a vivid experience, all passion and music and joy and pain: love, in all its obsessive, destructive ecstasy. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

pretentious nonsense

Depardieu plays a car salesman who falls in love with his ordinary-looking temporary secretary, despite being married to a gorgeous wife. The premise was promising but the result disappointing.
In general I'm a lover of French cinema but it does have a tendency to get preachy and pseudo-intellectual -- and that's what happens in this movie. We get lines of dialogue like this:
Mistress: I've vomited on your rug.
Wife: Take the rug. Leave my husband.
Sometimes the characters step out of character and deliver lines as if they were spectators or critics. Sometimes, they come together for absurd dinner parties and in one scene for a wedding at which they deliver ridiculous speeches in the manner of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." But in general, this is a sloppy, pretentious movie of little charm or worth. July 28, 2008

A film as surreal and complex as they come: Love and beauty never seemed more interesting than in Blier's mindwarper!

If you want to settle in for a light and entertaining breezy film about the complex intricasies of why and whom we love,then Bertrand Blier's TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU is not your fare!!! Blier's mindblower is about as difficult and surreal a treatise on attractions and why they occur and with what pain they can cause as this reviewer has ever seen! You will be richly rewarded as Blier's trip into the serendipitous world of unexplained attractions is explored and actualized through a totally brilliant and unconventional narrative (that must have been a real toughy for an actor to read on first glance!),clever scene changes that shift back and forth in time and place, characters who speak aloud their most secret inner thoughts (though not actually doing so!),unbelievably sensitive acting from the three principle actors,Josiane Balasko,Gerard Depardieu and Carole Bouquet,with all of this glued together by a geniously woven tapestry of the tragic/melancholic composer Franz Schubert's romantically charged quartets,symphonies and choral works. (This is highly significant to the film's theme as Schubert was a man thwarted in love,sickly, whose music always bordered on the romantic of the unfulfilled and unfinished,who died in his mid-thirties.One of the most clever uses of his music is when his HOLY,HOLY,HOLY, a hymn to the Trinity somberly intones when all three principle players are meshed into this love/betrayal triangle showing that only God could get them out of this mess!)

On the surface,the film is simply about the seeming attraction of a highly successful car salesman (Depardieu),who is married to his most beautiful and desired- by- all wife (Bouquet)with lovely children and mansion-like house,to his rather dowdy and "slob-like" temp secretary (Balasko)who returns the like attraction to her employer.The narrative at this point becomes totally unconventional and the film becomes progressively intertwined between what is real, what is emotion spoken and unspoken, and what is real time vs.what is something that may or may not actually have happened.Actually, what Blier shows us is the true craziness and paranoia/grandeur-like pomposity that overtakes people when they allow themselves to act upon their impulses! If this sounds confusing,you are correct to a point! If you are not totally alert at every turn in this marvelous French wonder you may be tempted to throw up your hands and scream "What!!??".But Bertrand Blier is smart enough to keep the viewer from falling from their own sane seat! Blier's film is so clever that it actually defies convention.It does help to know a little about the music and life of Franz Schubert and his music to understand why Blier particularly chose this composer. If this had been a straightforward narrative such as the American films UNFAITHFUL or even FATAL ATTRACTION, you would simply have had another taught thriller with a tidy ending. Blier doesnot give you that at all.He forces you to think in great detail about how affairs/attractions occur, the unrealistic sense of ultimate bliss they will bring, and the tragic results to everyone's psyche that they leave behind when they don't work out. Some will dismiss this as French arthouse intellectualism .I prefer to consider the alternative; a filmmaker's brilliant artistry that challenges the viewer beyond what normally is done by 99% of his contemporaries. May 1, 2007

A Charming Little Film

This film is definately charming, and is different from most of the main sream films.

A man, who has a beautiful wife and children, falls in love with his frumpy-dressing average-looking secretary. He makes love to her, cheating on his wife.

His wife becomes aware of this, but instead of leaving him, she tries to be the woman of his dreams, but cannot suceed. He discovers that a woman with no imperfections is not desirable, there is nothing more to want from her.

What happens in the end is for you to discover. October 5, 2005

A beutiful woman, sometimes doesn't allow to reach the bliss

Pascal wrote once: "The heart has its reasons that the reason unknows".

Only through the whole meaning of this deep thought you will be capable to understand why this apparently absurd and raising hair decision when you compare to Carole Bouquet one of the Goddess of the French Cinema and the humble secretary of this husband who would seem to find at last his authentic reason to live.

Perhaps Afrodite couldn't win the fight against the Mother Goddesss Earth: Gea. And this fact allows understand him since many of you may be disagree.

Penetrating and fascinating behavior study of the human mind and its apparent capricious twists. April 8, 2005

Not that good

I like Gerard Depardieu, but this movie was not good. It seemed almost unrealistic. Gerard is not convincing in this role. It was clear there was no chemistry between he and Josiane Balasko (his secretary). Just not believable. Sorry. September 25, 2004

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