Eyes Squeezed Shut (Or, You Could Go Blind! Or Fat!) (Or, Frenchmen Do Get Fat!)

I can see why they didn’t put the Gérard Depardieu masturbating scene in the trailer. It wouldn’t make for good box office results. O.K., sure, all right fine, if it had been Gérard Depardieu masturbating back in the Seventies it would have been an entirely different story. Back in the Seventies, Gérard Depardieu was kinda hot. But Mammuth came out just a couple of weeks ago, so in this film he’s all modern and masturbatory and present tense and present time and present decade and present day. And not to be shallow, but when you see Gérard in the flesh? In that full-fledged full-frontal fleshy façon ? Well not to be shallow or anything, but he’s gotten kind of . . . fleshy. (And get your minds out of the gutter––geez!––I’m not talking about that.) Actually, not to be to shallow or anything, but he’s...well he’s actually gotten kind of fat. Less in that jolly “ho-ho-ho” kind of way and more in that “wheeze-hack-wheeze-will-he-make-it-to-the, uh, climax” kind of way. So you can see where I’m, er, coming from.

D’abord : Some clarification, some precision, some facts, in the interest of actual accuracy for accuracy’s actual sake. In all actuality, in that (anti) climactic scene Gérard Depardieu is not actually technically masturbating. This is le show beez after all––there’s actually another droopy old fat-guy actor doing it for him. And technically, in all actuality, in the full-fledged-fleshy-full-frontal sense, you don’t see everything, tous, la totale totally fully up-front. But suggestion is worth a thousand unwelcome images as I like to say, and in Mammuth’s mammoth masturbation montage, you kinda––don’t look!––see enough. Or you kinda sit back, right there in the dark, and you close your eyes, or more like squeeze them tightly shut, so tightly shut that you kinda smudge and smear and stream your salon-issue swag mascara that you filched off a friend who works in such fields, and you sit back, voluntarily voraciously vision-impaired, hopefully not thinking of England and hopefully-definitely not thinking of the Queen, but hoping, with hope-inspired hope, with hope for hope’s sake, for it all to be hopefully over and wistfully, wantingly, wishfully, willfully thinking about Something Else. Like Gérard Depardieu’s career.

And here’s what you conclude: For a big-name, big-deal, big, publicly-personally in-real-life straight, once-married and many times heterosexually-involved high-priced A-list leading man, Gérard Depardieu’s not afraid to get it on with guys. Not on screen at least. And this wasn’t just at the beginning of his career when he was paying his dues and getting paid less, but in the middle of his career and now, too. You know how with some Hollywood actors, some sexily sexed-up sexy leading men, how they wear well-cut clothes so there’s rumors about them being gay and so they have to take parts that are all butchy and burly and macho and manly just to keep their rates up? Gérard Depardieu doesn’t seem too concerned with that. Nope, là-dessus, Gérard Depardieu ne me semble pas très inquiet. And he shouldn’t be worried: Word has it that he averages about 800.000 euros (the euro being what it is––or increasingly isn’t––that’s roughly $993,000 U.S.) per film, and in France that’s not change for chumps. And while admittedly, one must admit, that he hasn’t always made genius choices when it comes to scripts, Gérard Depardieu has made some kick-ass films. Especially the ones where he’s getting it on with guys. (What? You’re wondering why I didn’t make an ass-joke? Minds out of the gutter, puh-leez!)

Like remember Les Valseuses . . . “The Waltz-ers” directly but “Going Places” en américain ? You know, the film he always seemingly unconsciously refers to in interviews, as if he seemingly knowingly unconsciously knows that he and Bertrand Blier and Patrick Dewaere and Miou-Miou were onto something? Something Big? Something big and creative and artistic and innovative resulting out of them just freely fucking around? You’ve seen it, right? Right?? You probably have, with Depardieu being the single-most famous French actor on the other side of the Big Pond and all. I’m sure it played, like, everywhere. But if you haven’t then go out and get it, and if you don’t speak French make sure it’s with sub-titles and everything. I’m sure you’ll find it––how could you not? Because it’s goood, so good, so great, so gigantic that in my dictatorship, if I was a dictator, one would call it a chef-d’oeuvre and nothing else. This is the kind of film that other directors should wish they had made, the kind of dialogue that other writers should wish they had written. And that scene when Depardieu tricks Dewaere into sleeping with him? (Depardieu more or less actually rapes him, actually, but less in that Deliverance kind of way and more in that post-Nouvelle vague French cinema kind of way. . .) Well just quit shifting and squirming and bleating and squealing because that scene’s so damn-near perfect it’s an unconscionable understatement to call it merely “good.”

And then there’s Tenue de soirée, also by Blier, starring Michel Blanc and Miou-Miou and of course, Depardieu . . . And he’s such a natural, such a pro, such a ham without being a ham (he’s still sorta svelte after all) . . . and you feel like you’re watching someone who’s understood, in the best and purest of ways, what he’s meant to do. Of course he gets it on with Blanc, and that’s kinda the point, but it’s kinda beside the point, too. I can’t remember who he gets it on with in Buffet froid, or if he even does, but he plays a helluva charming killer in a helluva suitable setting: The bleak-blah-bland borderline-Paris business district of La Défense. Back when it was still being built. (Remember that first scene, where he kills the guy in the RER station? It...well it kinda killed, non ?) It’s another one of Blier’s cult creations, in which his dad, Bernard, stars too. (You remember––he plays the police inspector who turns a blind eye to Depardieu’s murderous ways.) That film was sooo good, so clever, so creative, so classy that when French audiences first saw it they were so shocked that when the screenings were over a number of indignant viewers stomped back to the box office to demand their money back. Talk about being on to something! Right on!!

So what happened? Why, in so many of his more recent films does it feel like Gérard Depardieu is just putting in time? Arguably his period with Blier––during which he confessed going into it in the spirit of making movies, and going through it breathing and bothering with and living for Blier––was kind of like a college football star’s glory years, a glowy-glorious-gloriful gad-about an art form that seemed to be headed so far beyond where it actually ended up. Oh sure, he’s still a pro now, and a natural and a ham, too, with the more sophisticated hammish savoir-faire of an artist who’s refined his chops, who’s evolved and developed and matured. He’s the ideal unassuming husband to Fanny Ardant’s sultry-but-insecure wife in the typically French love story à trois that serves as the basis of Nathalie. And he does what it takes for Chabrol in Bellamy, the first time he actually worked with the much-loved, much-revered, much-adored adorable old Uncle Claude. You can’t accuse Depardieu of not delivering what’s called for, or for not simply doing his job; he shows up and jumps in, pulls it all together and gets it done. But you also feel a little sad, a little wistful, a little nostalgic all the same. A few years ago he announced his retirement––said he had made enough films. It was time to pay more attention to his wine châteaux, to be a man of the terroir, to fill his fingernails with dirt, to get back down to earth. No one believed him, of course, least of all himself, and he still shows up on the big screen, more often, so much more often than from time to time. It’s different, though, and he’s different, too––not ‘off’ but off all the same. Like something’s shut him down . . . turned around what used to turn him on.

“That’s the danger of cinema or of what television has shown us. The danger of uselessness, or of information. Now we know everything, but it serves nothing,” Depardieu recently lamented to Premiere. On the same Mammuth media push, he vented to VSD: “We live in a world where there are no more mysteries, where everything is clear. . . What impresses me about cinema is sometimes what bothers me. . .”

You can see why he took the role in Mammuth, a sort of road-trip movie by a sort-of similar-but-French version of the formidable frères Coen. We can beat up on Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern for making us watch Gérard beating off, but we sure can’t accuse them of indulging in inexcusably indulgent intellectual masturbation. Or of showing and telling too much––except for that part about, well, you know––when all we needed was a peek. On the surface this is a French story, a real French one, one that’s identifiable to any Frenchman or Frenchwoman who has ever battled their country’s Kafka-esque administration and lost . . . And they all have, and they all do. I could go into detailed descriptions of what Mammuth’s all about, recount how Depardieu’s blue-collar character is forced to embark on a fool’s errand to round up a few lost fiches de paye (that’s “pay stubs”) so he can collect on his retirement. I could rant about how ridiculous this exercise is, in and of itself, and how, yes, oui, mais bien sûr !, all French workers are expected to keep these documents for life or else. But that’s only one side of the story, the French one, and to reveal the farther-reaching human side would be to kill the mystère. Because Mammuth is a human story, grainy and great and mysterious, and it’s better to watch it and see then to be shown and be told. Besides, you’ll go see it, right? I mean, it has to be showing somewhere. What with Depardieu being such a big deal and all.

In its delightful little way, Mammuth is a throwback to Les Valseuses––tamer, sure, but subversive and savvy and superb and smart all the same. And in his seemingly unconscious conscious way, Gérard Depardieu seems to consciously-unconsciously make the connection. Once again venting to VSD: “Les Valseuses was in the spirit of youthful provocation, we were in the spirit of revolution. [With Mammuth], we’re in the spirit of demolition.”

Maybe so, peut-être, maybe so. And maybe not, peut-être pas, maybe not. Strong spirits are hard to demolish, after all, while revolutions demolish a lot. But in between there’s hope that some people get it . . . and, having filled their fingernails with dirt, revive their taste for stirring shit up.

First published on The New Vulgate in 2010.