this week in film and television

THE BRINK

Alison Klayman seeks to reveal the method behind the madness of Stephen Bannon in The Brink

THE BRINK (Alison Klayman, 2019)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, March 29
212-924-7771
www.magpicturesinternational.com
www.ifccenter.com

Near the end of Alison Klayman’s illuminating documentary, The Brink, after a lively debate between Steve Bannon and conservative commentator David Frum, former Goldman Sachs president John Thornton tells Bannon backstage, “To people who don’t know you, you’re totally disarming because you’re sort of charming and kind of, you pick up irony and you’re, they’re kind of shocked that you’re such a quote unquote nice guy.” But what about the people who do know him? In the film, which opens today at IFC, Klayman doesn’t humanize the man considered an evil genius as much as demystify the onetime Trump campaign head and Breitbart News founding member, following him from the fall of 2017, as he is ousted from the White House shortly after the Charlottesville incident, through the midterm elections of the following year. She is embedded as part of his otherwise all-male entourage as he travels around the country and the world, building support for his far-right beliefs, pushing his agenda of “economic nationalism” and raising money for his 501 (c) 4, Citizens of the American Republic.

Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Take Your Pills) is given nearly full access; Bannon only occasionally asks her to leave the room as he meets with such far-right populists as French National Rally Party leaders Jérôme Rivière and Louis Aliot, Belgian People’s Party politician Mischaël Modrikamen and Vlaams Belang Party leader Filip Dewinter, Sweden Democrats member Kent Ekeroth, former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, Italian Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini, Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni, and other anti-refugee extremists. He sits down with Blackwater founder Erik Prince, visits with Chinese billionaire Miles Kwok, and plans courses of action with Republican strategists, pollsters, and congressional candidates. He particularly enjoys engaging with members of the media who might not necessarily agree with him; he speaks with Devil’s Bargain author and Bloomberg journalist Joshua Green, Fire and Fury writer Michael Wolff, MSNBC’s Ari Melber, and reporters from Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel.

Stephen K. Bannon goes on the road to push his far-right ideology in The Brink

One of the best moments of the film occurs when Guardian journalist Paul Lewis challenges Bannon on issues of globalism and anti-Semitism. Bannon refuses to back down without evincing upset or anger; he relishes controversy, defending himself with a sly smile. He travels to small-town America, showing his documentary Trump @ War at local gatherings, speaking directly to the “deplorables,” exhibiting care and understanding, precisely the kind of thing that Hillary Clinton didn’t do, contributing to her loss of the presidency. The question of Bannon’s sincerity and true purpose hovers in every interaction. Bannon describes his Trump film to Klayman as propaganda, but Klayman then shows us a woman who’s just seen the film praising it because it’s not propaganda. Klayman also captures Bannon raving about the German efficiency that went into building concentration camps, comparing himself to Leni Riefenstahl, supporting Roy Moore’s Senate candidacy, and continually posing for pictures with couples, putting the woman in the center and saying, “a rose between two thorns.”

The Brink was made because producer Marie Therese Guirgis (On Her Shoulders, The Loneliest Planet), the younger sister of writer-director Stephen Adly Guirgis, used to work with Bannon at an independent film distribution company, and she became disturbed by his far-right activity. As he gained power, the left-wing Guirgis would email him, calling him out accusingly, but he would always reply in a civil tone. On her fourth request to make a film about him, he finally relented, agreeing to give Guirgis and Klayman complete control over the project. The two progressive women are not shy about where they stand on the issues and about Bannon’s beliefs; Klayman, who did not have a crew for the shoot — she did the cinematography and the sound and served as coeditor and producer — includes news footage that is not particularly favorable to Bannon, and she does not attempt to humanize him so much as depict him as a driven, determined man who is a master manipulator. The title of the film also reveals their thoughts about Bannon, coming from an Abraham Lincoln quote about being “on the brink of destruction.” When Bannon, who prefers wearing at least two shirts all the time, lets his guard down, as he does on several occasions, he turns into a nasty, self-obsessed figure who makes rash, mean-spirited decisions and is not as pleasant as he likes himself to appear. Of course, it’s impossible to know when Bannon is playing Klayman, using the documentary to further his own ideology. But in taming the beast, Klayman also reveals Bannon’s fascinating methods, something that liberals around the world should study and learn from. Klayman will be at IFC for Q&As with investigative journalist Azmat Khan on March 29 at 7:15 and March 30 at 2:45, with Alissa Wilkinson of VOX on March 30 at 5:00, and on April 1 at 7:15.

WORKING WOMAN

Liron Ben Shlush is powerful as a married mother of three reentering the job market and facing sexual harassment in Working Woman

WORKING WOMAN (ISHA OVEDET) (אשה עובדת) (Michal Aviad, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, March 27
212-924-7771
zeitgeistfilms.com
www.ifccenter.com

Liron Ben Shlush gives a heart-wrenching performance as a mother reentering the work force in Israeli feminist director Michal Aviad’s second fiction film, Working Woman. Ben Shlush is Orna, who has three young children and gets a job to help support the family while her husband, Ofer (Oshri Cohen), gets his struggling new restaurant off the ground. She takes a position with her former army commander, Benny (Menashe Noy), a high-powered real estate developer. Despite her lack of experience, Orna is an instant success as a savvy salesperson, pushing exclusive new beachfront luxury property. Orna is dismayed when Benny unexpectedly kisses her against her wishes, but when he continues his advances even as she shoves him away, she finds herself in an old, all-too-common situation, forced to decide whether she controls her body or her boss does; since her body is basically a commodity in this society, her decision is financial as well, as it will affect both her career and her family.

Orna (Liron Ben Shlush) has to keep looking over her shoulder, watching out for her predatory boss, Benny (Menashe Noy), in Michal Aviad’s second fiction film

Written before the #MeToo movement began by longtime documentarian Aviad (Jenny & Jenny, Invisible) with Sharon Azulay Eyal and Michal Vinik, Working Woman tells a familiar story but provides unique perspective. Although Orna does nothing to encourage Benny, she begins questioning whether his creepy attraction to her is her fault regardless, that she is not doing enough to keep him away from her. She is surrounded by wealth — Benny is a rich man, living in a large, fancy home with his wife, Sari (Dorit Lev-Ari), and Orna spends her days trying to sell luxury apartments to the one percent, including the Benayouns (Gilles Ben-David and Corinne Hayat), a French couple who might bring a small community with them — but she and Ofer, a proud man who wants no help, were having financial difficulties prior to her job. If she were to quit, her family would suffer, something she will not allow to happen even as she considers the cost. Aviad handles the conflict with a profound sensitivity and deep understanding, providing no easy answers when it comes to sexual harassment. Cinematographer Daniel Miller composes long shots that follow Ben Shlush’s (Next to Her, Road 40 South) yearning, expressive eyes as she searches for a way out, a place where she can be a wife and a mother with a good full-time job. Key scenes feature subtleties that emphasize the power a male boss can hold over a female employee in so many ways that go beyond forcible contact. Working Woman opens at IFC on March 27; Aviad will be at the Greenwich Village theater for Q&As at the 7:45 screenings on March 27 and 30.

BAM AND TRIPLE CANOPY — ON RESENTMENT: HUNGER

Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) are caught amid the Troubles in Steve McQueen’s Hunger

HUNGER (Steve McQueen, 2008)
BAMfilm, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Monday, March 25, 4:00 & 9:30
Series runs March 20-28
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.ifcfilms.com

In 2004, we saw Steve McQueen’s fascinating video installation of three short works at Wellesley’s Davis Museum. As entertaining and intriguing as that show was, it never could have prepared us for Hunger, the British-born Turner Prize winner’s brutal and harrowing feature-length debut, let alone his follow-up, 12 Years a Slave. Winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes, Hunger is set amid the Troubles in Northern Island, as IRA members are locked up in the Maze prison. Seeking special category status, the prisoners are on a Blanket and No Wash protest, refusing to wear official garb or clean up after themselves. They wipe their feces all over their cell walls and let their maggot-infested garbage pile up in corners. Meanwhile, the guards, who live in their own kind of daily fear, never miss a chance to beat the prisoners mercilessly. McQueen (Shame, Widows) introduces the audience to the infamous prison through the eyes of one of the high-ranking guards, Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), and new prisoner Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan). Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt often lets his camera linger on a scene, with little or no dialogue, composing them as if individual works of art; one particularly gorgeous shot features Lohan having a cigarette outside the prison as snow falls. About halfway through, the film radically changes focus as Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham) visits H Block leader Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), leading to sixteen minutes of uninterrupted dialogue, the camera never moving, as the two men discuss Sands’s planned hunger strike. Written with Enda Walsh (Disco Pigs, The Walworth Farce), McQueen’s film is a visually stunning, emotionally powerful story that will leave you ragged.

Prison guard Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) stops for a smoke in powerful Hunger

Hunger is screening March 25 in the BAM / Triple Canopy series “On Resentment,” which asks such questions as “How can resentment be reclaimed by those who are used to fits of anger and bitterness being called unproductive, petty, selfish, even pathological?” and “Can — and must — resentment be useful?” The series continues through March 28 with such other films as Liang Zhao’s Petition, Lucretia Martel’s Zama, Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light, Brett Story’s The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, and Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña’s Who Killed Vincent Chin?

WHAT THE FEST!?

Larry Fesssendens Depraved kicks off outrageous film festival at IFC Center

Larry Fessenden’s Depraved kicks off outrageous film festival at IFC Center

IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
March 20-24
212-924-7771
www.whatthefestnyc.com
www.ifccenter.com

The second annual What the Fest!? is a five-day extravaganza of crazy films that will have you muttering out loud, “What the f!?” Held at IFC Center, the festival opens March 20 with the world premiere of indie horror maestro Larry Fessenden’s creepy Depraved, a modern-day Frankenstein tale set in New York City. Fessenden, who has made such underground faves as Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter, will participate in a postscreening Q&A with producers Jenn Wexler and Chadd Harbold and cast members, while the video presentation Frankenstein Origins will precede the movie. That same night, the New York City premiere of Crazy Pictures’ Swedish thriller The Unthinkable will be preceded by Sydney Clara Brafman’s one-minute short The Only Thing I Love More Than You Is Ranch Dressing and a Q&A with Professor Anna Maria Bounds about the coming New York apocalypse.

The second annual What the Fest!? features the world premiere of the restoration of the 1970 documentary Satanis:

The second annual What the Fest!? features the world premiere of the restoration of the utterly strange 1970 documentary Satanis: The Devil’s Mass

Among the other bizarro highlights are Pollyanna McIntosh’s Darlin’, preceded with a tribute to late horror writer Jack Ketchum by Douglas E. Winter; Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead, followed by a panel discussion on making zombie flicks; Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s suburban comedy Greener Grass; the panel discussion “Female Trouble: Fearless Women Leading the Way in Horror, Fantasy, and Suspense,” with Meredith Alloway, Roxanne Benjamin, Emma Tammi, and Wexler; the American premiere of Peter Brunner’s To the Night, starring Caleb Landry Jones; Zack Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein’s Freaks, starring Emile Hirsch; and Chinese master Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, preceded by a talk with stuntwomen Kimmy Suzuki and Ai Ikeda. Oh, as part of the festival special focus “Satan Is Your Friend,” there’s also the world premiere of the restoration of Ray Laurent’s 1970 documentary, Satanis: The Devil’s Mass, which will do a lot more than just have you repeating, “What the f?!,” and New York Asian Film Festival cofounder Grady Hendrix will be on hand to present his latest book, We Sold Our Souls, with a talk and signing. Like we said, WTF?!

BAM AND TRIPLE CANOPY — ON RESENTMENT: LA HAINE

Hubert (Hubert Koundé), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Vinz (Vincent Cassel) experience a wild and dangerous day in La haine

CURATOR’S CHOICE SCREENING: LA HAINE (HATE) (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Wednesday, March 20, 7:30
Series runs March 20-28
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.canopycanopycanopy.com

BAM and Triple Canopy, the New York–based online magazine, have teamed up to present the provocative film series “On Resentment,” which kicks off March 20 at 7:30 with Mathieu Kassovitz’s incendiary 1995 stunner, La haine, inspired by the real-life stories of Makome M’Bowole and Malik Oussekine, two young men who were killed by police in 1993 and 1986, respectively. Kassovitz’s second feature film (following Métisse), La haine, which means “hate,” is set in the immediate aftermath of Paris riots as three friends —the Jewish Vinz (Vincent Cassel), the Afro-French Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and the Arab Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) — spend about twenty hours wandering the mean streets of their banlieue (suburban projects) and Paris, causing minor mayhem as they encounter skinheads, stop off for some wine at an art opening, try to get into a hot club, and, over and over, become embroiled with the police.

The disaffected youths are fed up with a system that continues to treat them as outsiders, assuming they are criminals. Hubert wants to get out of the banlieue through hard work, but he keeps running into obstacles that are out of his control; at one point, when something goes wrong, he closes his eyes as if he can wish it away. Saïd is an immature schemer who thinks he can slide out of any untoward situation, especially with the help of his much more grounded older brother. But Vinz is a significant problem; one of their friends, Abdel (Abdel Ahmed Ghili), was arrested at the riots and has been severely injured while in police custody. Vinz has sworn to kill a policeman if Abdel dies, something that becomes more possible when he picks up a gun an officer dropped. “I’m fuckin’ sick of the goddam system!” Vinz proclaims, filled with resentment. The three young men pass by a few signs that say “The World Is Yours,” a reference to Scarface, but that seems far out of reach for them.

Vinz (Vincent Cassel) sees trouble coming in Mathieu Kassovitz’s explosive La haine

Photographed in gritty black-and-white by Pierre Aïm and edited with a caged fury by Kassovitz and Scott Stevenson, La haine is electrifying cinema, a powder keg of a film ready to explode at any second. The time is shown onscreen before each scene, going from 10:38 to 06:00, like a ticking time bomb. The film has a documentary-like quality, complete with actual news footage of riots and violence. Kassovitz shows up as a skinhead, while his father, director and writer Peter Kassovitz, is a patron at the art gallery. The soundtrack features songs by French hip-hoppers Assassin; Cassel’s brother, Mathias Crochon, is a member of the group. And look for French star Vincent Lindon’s riotous cameo as a very drunk man.

Several times Vinz appears to be looking straight into the camera, pointing his gun accusingly at the audience; his complete disdain for all types of authority is reckless and dangerous but also understandable, and Kassovitz is extending that rage beyond the screen. In fact, during the November 2005 riots in France, people looked to Kassovitz for a response, and the writer-actor-director eventually got into a blog battle with Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, who would later become prime minister. Kassovitz wrote, “As much as I would like to distance myself from politics, it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.” Sarkozy replied, “You seem to be acquainted with the suburbs well enough to know, deep inside you, that the situation has been tense there for many years and that the unrest is deep-rooted. Your film La haine, shot in 1995, already showed this unease that right-wing and left-wing governments had to deal with, with varying results. To claim this crisis is down to the Minister of the Interior’s sayings and doings is yet another way of missing the point. I attributed this to an untimely and quick-tempered reaction.”

The BAM/Triple Canopy series is a nine-day program of films that focus on the concept of resentment as it applies to politics, identity, and representation, asking such questions as “How can resentment be reclaimed by those who are used to fits of anger and bitterness being called unproductive, petty, selfish, even pathological?” and “Can — and must — resentment be useful?” The Curator’s Choice screening of La haine will be followed by a discussion with artist and writer Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, series programmer Ashley Clark, and Triple Canopy editor Emily Wang, who cowrote the TC article “A Note on Resentment” with Shen Goodman, which states, “We’re proposing to hold on to resentment not so much as a means of plotting the downfall of our enemies — though why not, it is the resentment issue — but as a starting point for thinking and making and belonging. . . . Who, if anyone, has a right to be resentful? How can resentment be useful? (Must resentment be useful?)” And of course, the film is relevant yet again in light of the Yellow Vest protests held earlier this year in Paris and the many people of color shot by police or who die in custody under questionable, controversial circumstances here in America. The series continues through March 28 with such other films as Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Lindsay Anderson’s If . . . , and John Akomfrah’s Handsworth Songs.

BABYLON

Brinsley Forde stars as the conflicted Blue in Franco Rosso’s incendiary Babylon

BABYLON (Franco Rosso, 1980)
Expands Friday, March 15
www.kinolorber.com

One of the best, and most important, British films of the last forty years took the long route to reach America, but it’s finally here, and it’s a knockout. In 1973-74, Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman wrote Babylon, a somewhat semiautobiographical story of prejudice and bigotry set around Jamaican sound system culture during the Thatcher era in South London. The BBC rejected it, and after several production companies passed on it as well, it was finally picked up by Mamoun Hassan of the National Film Finance Corporation. The movie was shot in six weeks on location in Deptford and Brixton and received an X rating, despite having limited violence and no sex. It screened at Cannes but was turned down by the New York Film Festival, which considered the subject matter too controversial. The film was restored in 2008, but an old print was shown at BAM in 2012, the only time the film was officially shown in the United States. That is, until now; the scorching tale at last got its American theatrical release March 8 at BAM and has now opened as well at IFC Center, Kew Gardens Cinemas, Nitehawk, and the Magic Johnson Harlem 9. Babylon is a don’t-miss work that is still frighteningly relevant today, even though it was ripped from the headlines of the 1970s.

The Ital Lion crew prepares for a toasting battle in Babylon

Brinsley Forde, a former child actor and founding member and original guitarist for the British reggae group Aswad, stars as Blue, a toaster — a Jamaican dancehall deejay who chants over riddims — whose crew, Ital Lion, is preparing for a bit-time competition against their archrival, Jah Shaka (the real-life legend who plays himself). Blue is a mechanic but would rather spend his time toasting, smoking spliffs, and goofing around with his buddies, including Beefy (Trevor Lair), Dreadhead (Archie Pool), Scientist (Brian Bovell), Errol (David N. Haynes), Lover (Victor Romero Evans), and Ronnie (Karl Howman), the only white man in the group. When a racist Caucasian family living above their hangout starts threatening them, some of the Ital Lion crew want to fight back, but Blue tries to prevent any violence. However, following a harrowing night when he’s chased through the dark streets by white men in a car, Blue packs his bags and reconsiders his future.

Babylon is a blistering film, spectacularly photographed by Chris Menges, who would go on to win Oscars for his cinematography on The Killing Fields and The Mission, and expertly edited by Thomas Schwalm, bringing the rhythm of the crew to the fore. In his first feature film, Rosso, a documentarian who spent his career making works about the underrepresented, captures the energy and the rage, the spirit and the fear experienced by Blue (superbly played by Forde, who was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2015) and his friends as they try to survive amid ever-more-threatening xenophobic danger that is almost begging for revolution and rebellion. It echoes what is happening around the world now, particularly the treatment of refugees and immigrants (legal and illegal) and calls to build a wall to keep out “the other.” Perhaps not surprisingly, cowriter-director Rosso (The Mangrove Nine, Lucha Libre) was the son of an Italian immigrant, cowriter Stellman (Quadrophenia, Defence of the Realm) is the son of a Viennese Jewish immigrant, producer Gavrik Losey (Magical Mystery Tour, Agatha) is the son of blacklisted American director Joseph Losey, and NFCC managing director Hassan is the son of a Saudi immigrant. And of course, the music is simply phenomenal, from Dennis Bovell’s pulsating soundtrack to songs by Aswad, Yabby You, Cassandra, Johnny Clarke, I-Roy, and Michael Prophet. In this intensely realistic and deeply involving masterpiece, Rastaman (Cosmo Laidlaw) identifies Africa, Jamaica, and England as the “Babylonian triangle of captivity,” but forty years later it continues to spread far and wide, ensnaring more and more in its hateful reach.

AMOUR OR LESS — A BLIER BUFFET: GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is part of Bertrand Blier festival at the Quad

Solange (Carole Laure), Raoul (Gérard Depardieu), and Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere) form a unique kind of family in Bertrand Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

GET OUR YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS (PRÉPAREZ VOS MOUCHOIRS) (Bertrand Blier, 1978)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
March 15-21
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

French writer-director Bertrand Blier’s Oscar-winning Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is no weepy melodrama. If you need hankies while watching, they’ll be for the tears rolling down your face from laughter. A fortieth-anniversary 2K restoration is screening March 15-21 in the Quad series “Amour or Less: A Blier Buffet,” a nine-film celebration of the five-decade career of the controversial auteur, who has been regularly labeled a misogynist. Get Out Your Handkerchiefs has stirred up its share of naysayers through the years, so it’s fascinating to watch it now, in the midst of the #MeToo movement. The film opens in a restaurant where the brutish, doting Raoul (Gérard Depardieu) is eating with his bored, disinterested wife, Solange (Carole Laure). Suspecting that she is stealing glances at a man seated at a table behind him, Raoul approaches him, a schoolteacher named Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere), and practically begs him to sleep with his wife. Raoul, a driving instructor, loves Solange so much that he is willing to go to great lengths to make her happy, even if it means sharing her bed with another man.

Adolescence hits Christian Belœil (Riton Liebman) hard in Oscar-winning romantic comedy

Of course, she has something to say about it and ultimately decides, without much excitement, that the plan is fine with her; she desperately wants to have a baby but has been unable to conceive with her husband. The men begin having quite the bromance themselves as they talk about Mozart while Solange knits, and knits, and knits. (The first scene Blier wrote was when the two men have a less-than-intelligent discussion on Mozart; Blier then built the film around that.) Their green-grocer neighbor (Michel Serrault) starts hanging around as well, concerned about Solange’s search for contentment. Solange, Raoul, and Stéphane spend a summer working together at a camp, where they meet Christian Belœil (Riton Liebman), a thirteen-year-old rich kid who gets bullied by the other boys but takes a liking to Solange as his hormones rage out of control. The film gets more absurdist, and funnier and funnier, as it heads into territory destined to offend politically correct watchdogs everywhere.

A fortieth-anniversary 2K restoration opens at the Quad on March 15

A fortieth-anniversary 2K restoration of Get Out Your Handkerchiefs opens at the Quad on March 15

Named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics in addition to nabbing the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is a delightful farce that turns traditional family and societal relationships inside out and upside down, whether it be parents and children, mothers and sons, husbands and wives, teachers and students, or just a couple of dudes. Depardieu and Dewaere, who previously teamed up in Blier’s Going Places, are a comic force as a couple of ordinary guys caught up in a crazy riff on Jules et Jim, Raoul a driving instructor who doesn’t know where he’s going, Stéphane a man obsessed with Pocket Books. Laure (Sweet Movie, La Tête de Normande St-Onge) charmingly underplays the enigmatic Solange: Raoul and Stéphane think she might be a simpleton, but is she? The scenes of her knitting are hilariously deadpan, and the matching sweaters she produces eventually show up on nearly everyone, their prosaic patterns sometimes echoed in the walls, floors furniture, and other elements. Meanwhile, the comedy turns poignant as Christian, who can’t stand his parents (Eléonore Hirt and Jean Rougerie) or the other kids, spends more time with his new adult friends, especially Solange. At one point Christian is in bed reading Ralph Dennis’s super-noir On bricole, the cover showing a man torn in half, as if Raoul and Stéphane are two parts of the same human being (or referencing Christian’s growth from boy to man). And Stéphane is reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, a novel about a rather unusual family. Through it all is a wonderfully evocative score by Georges Delerue. “Amour or Less: A Blier Buffet” continues through March 21 with such other Blier works as Beau-père, Merci la vie, Ménage (Tenue de soirée), and Going Places.