Bertrand Blier, the French film director with a long history of provocative offerings including Les Valseuses (Going Places), Tenue de Soirée (Evening Dress) and Trop Belle Pour Toi (Too Beautiful for You), has died aged 85. His son, Leonard, told AFP that the film-maker “died peacefully at home Monday night in Paris, surrounded by his wife and children”.
Blier achieved his greatest successes in the 70s and 80s with a series of outrage-baiting films, many featuring Gérard Depardieu, which concentrated on exposing wounded male machismo. In 2011 he told the Guardian: “I’ve always enjoyed shocking the bourgeois. I know I make buddy movies, but what intrigues me again and again is how male friendships are relatively unproblematic, and yet when men approach what they passionately desire, then their problems begin.”
