Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil

Amazon.com

For cinephiles who enjoy experimental storytelling, Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil offers a fascinating movie experience. While providing a tour-de-force showcase for French actress Anouk Grinberg, director Bertrand Blier defies conventional narrative in telling the troubled story of Victorine, a young woman from the tenements of Marseilles whose life is comprised (at various ages from 12 to 25, all played by Grinberg) of a series of surreal incidents that take on the unsettling quality of a fever dream. Social conventions are reversed, moral codes are rendered anarchic (e.g., burglary is encouraged), and linear chronology is replaced by a timeline that leaps forward and back on a whim, leaving the viewer deliberately disoriented, with none of the familiar reference points for following the story. But there's a method to Blier's cinematic madness: Not only is the film beautifully photographed and brilliantly acted (with a cast including Marcello Mastroianni and then-newcomer Olivier Martinez), but there's a kind of frazzled logic to Blier's depiction of lost innocence, social corruption, and borderline insanity. It's not for all tastes, but Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil (the name of a schoolyard game in the film) is a challenging drama that rewards attentive viewers. --Jeff Shannon

Description

From acclaimed director Bertrand Blier (Get Out Your Handerchiefs, Too Beautiful for You) comes Un Deux Trois Soleil, the dreamlike tale of Victorine, a young girl growing up in the slums of Marseilles with her alcoholic father (Marcello Mastroianni - star of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2), and her crazy mother. Bizarre and surreal at the same time, reminiscent of Buñuel and Fellini, Un Deux Trois Soleil is innovative, outrageous, and a triumph for Mastroianni, in one of his most unusual roles. The film also features Olivier Martinez (Taking Lives, Unfaithful) in his breakthrough role for which he won the 1994 César Award for Most Promising Actor.

Customer Reviews:

Blier at his best!.......2005-06-11

I have only seen 3 Bertrand Blier movies, but this one is easily my favorite of the 3. BUFFET FROID, starring Gerard Depardieu, was the first I saw -- and the fact that it was basically plotless and full of absurdist humor made it instantly a favored flick. I more recently saw Blier's Oscar-winning GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS but thought it was a little too conventional and strained next to the more flat-out freewheeling BUFFET.
About 15 years after that pair of movies comes this one, which marries the sensibilities of the other two perfectly. Like HANDKERCHIEFS, it actually has a story, but like BUFFET, it doesn't bother with real-world logic, good taste, or linear chronology in telling that story.
SOLEIL is sort of a movie about coming-of-age in the projects, sort of a movie about sexual psychology, and sort of a cut-and-pasted collage of unusual moments.
The magical thing is that the damn thing winds up more moving than it probably would have if it was a straightforward tearjerker about hard living. Of course, Blier can't be credited completely for this, as his actors are wonderful, especially Anouk Grinberg as Victorine, our perpetually childish heroine, and Marcello Mastroianni as her charming perpetually drunk papa.
An underseen gem.

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