Bertrand Blier
Bertrand Blier (1939–2025) was a French filmmaker, novelist, and provocateur whose comedies of male anxiety and sexual transgression made him one of the most distinctive voices in late-twentieth-century French cinema. Born in Boulogne-Billancourt to the actor Bernard Blier, he worked as an assistant in the early 1960s before making his first feature in 1963. He found his signature with Going Places (Les Valseuses, 1974), an anarchic adaptation of his own novel that turned Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere into stars overnight; Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He continued in a vein of caustic, surreal romantic comedy with Buffet Froid, Ménage, Too Beautiful for You, and Merci la vie. He died in Paris in 2025.