Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil

In a multicultural tenement neighborhood, young French gamine Victorine (Anouk Grinberg) flits back and forth between reality and fantasy as a means of coping with her bizarre, often cruel everyday life. Her school is filled with underage boy gangs bent on molesting any women in their paths, including one of their own teachers - who actually relents ("Don't rape me, you jerks! I'm consenting!"). Her family life is hardly more normal; her deranged mother (Myriam Boyer) dotes on her every movement; her tipsy father (Marcello Mastroianni, speaking heavily accented French) usually can't find his way home and brings over starving kids, and one of her neighbors, a large, oft-topless African woman, can seemingly bring the dead back to life by coddling them to her chest. While giving herself to another group of boys, Victorine reveals she can't differentiate between a good memory ("something you look back and smile") and a bad one ("something you laugh off") but soon builds some good ones with a handsome thief, Paul (a pre-stardom Olivier Martinez), who unfortunately doesn't get to hang around for long. As time passes, her development into womanhood and marriage is further compromised by the troubling interplay of reality and fantasy, the living and the dead. Best known for his ribald, non-judgmental international hits Going Places and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, this later excursion into magic realism by Bertrand Blier is a far more aesthetically refined but experimental affair. Known more for his outrageous storylines and incredible knack for drawing his actors into dangerous territory, Blier displays more of an assured technical side here thanks to the luxurious scope compositions and bold, inventive use of color and negative space. Grinberg and Mastroianni have the most affecting moments of the film, with the former's heartbreaking moral confusion ("Doesn't anyone need loving? This is a proposition") leading to a merciful and strangely affecting surrealist finale. Unlike most white-faced French cinema, Un, deux, trios, soleil revels in the variety of races and lifestyles present in the country's middle and lower classes. The evocative, catchy score by Arabic pop favorite Khaled nicely reflects on the melting pot of actors present here. Even the intimidating boy gangs consist of a motley racial crew, an interesting contrast to the usual black-or-white casting one usually sees in American films. While the prospect of underage actors pantomiming aggressive sexual activity (albeit with no nudity) probably won't go over well with many American viewers, there's nothing here that even comes close to constituting obscenity in European countries; nobody's really exploited or scarred. Such is life. For anyone familiar with Blier's films, the sexually active kids (a sort of nightmarish inverse of the central underage relationship in Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) will be far less of a shock than the whimsical, time-tripping fantasy right out of Slaughter-house Five. Though it's not based on a book, this feels like one of the nervier '70s adaptations that were all the rage in more progressive movie houses. Barely seen outside the Continent, Blier's film hits DVD in a beautifully transferred edition that should earn it wider play than most of his films from the past two decades or so (Too Beautiful for You notwithstanding). The immaculate anamorphic transfer is beautifully colorful and features easy-to-read optional English subtitles. Apart from a filmography, the disc is barren of extras but worth checking out for more adventurous French cinema devotees. For more information about Un, Deux, Trios, Soleil, visit Home Vision Entertainment. To order Un, Deux, Trios, Soleil, go to TCM Shopping. by Nathaniel Thompson