Les Acteurs

An ensemble film with thirty leading names from French cinema playing themselves (except for Josiane Balasko playing Pierre Arditi) who meet during (falsely) coincidental situations. Their complicity, their doubts, their acerbic comments on their activities make this film a disillusioned but amusing comment on what it means to be an actor. Filming them as a group of youngsters, Blier throws away the story and the script. Made up of off the wall sketches and farcical playlets mixing vérité effects with slapstick fiction, Blier gives us "an irresistible film of messing about which is absolute and deliberate up to the end". The last scene of the film is very moving with the dialogue from beyond the grave with his father paying homage to those he loves: "youth is implacable, actors mature like wine. They age well. And the older they are, the more fun it is to see them acting the clown" (Bertrand Blier).