"Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil" is a ten year old French flick recently released on DVD probably to capitalize on the names of Bier or the late Mastroianni. However, the film, a dramady, which tells of the misadventures of a post pubescent school girl growing up in Marseille (played by 30 year old Grinberg) is neither sufficiently engaging nor funny to make it worth all the subtitle reading. Much of the humor is lost in translation and the film's warmth soon grows fallow as the weak slice-of-life plot grows increasingly insipid. Probably not worthwhile for anyone other than French speakers into French films who have seen all the more recent and much better stuff. (C)

If you know Bertrand Blier, and you like Bertrand Blier, you will like this movie. When we like Bertrand Blier's work, it means we u derstand his work, a d we like him whatever. For the others, be prepared because there are many unconventional moments in the movie. Be curious, give it a chance, try it out!

I used to look forward to Blier, I think because he knew how to surprise. Then his two regulars moved on. Patrick Dewaere died. Depardieu, working constantly and still talented, became fat and rich. Blier continued to turn out idiosyncratic works, but eventually I was reading about them in the Cahiers more often I could see them in this country.

What I used to anticipate, was a single startling thought exercise transformed into an hour-and-a-half-long conversation between usually three, maybe four, at least slightly frantic individuals: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs; Buffet Froid; Beau Pere; My Best Friend's Girl; Too Beautiful for You. Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil, disappointed me a little because it lacks the earlier films' challenging premises. In it, Blier experiments with style. It's an exercise in form more than in thought. Though it surprises constantly, it poses nothing as intriguing as those older films' puzzles.

Nearly everything in this film, even adults playing themselves as children and the dead getting in their two cents and more long after they're cold, is some degree of cliché. That's not to fault Blier. His title announces as much: 1…2…3…Boo! Cliché...cliché...cliché...Soleil! Drunken Pa, domineering mother, boring husband, exiting past fling, hot school teacher(Where are the rest of the girls in the class?),incapable-of-guilt bar-keeper. The surprises, and nearly the only real pleasure, come from the clichés' arrangement, from distortions in narrative order.

Though it's set up mid-film, with references to the 722 door, Mastroianni's big scene at the finish struck me as a producer's move, not a director's. This wasn't Mastroianni's film. It was Anouk Grinberg's (Victorine). Any of many actors could have played his role. There was no need for the character to be Italian. Grinberg began and should have finished the film.