Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

French director Bertrand Blier,known for idiosyncratic films,is famous for working with different types of actors. For this film, he chose to cast 4 of the biggest male actors of France including his father Bernard Blier who gave astounding performances in a black tale set in urban milieu where each person reveals himself as crazy. Watching this film one wonders why La Défense area of Paris was always so empty. This leads us to state that what Marco Ferreri achieved in "Don't Touch the White Woman" has been achieved again by Bertrand Blier with "Buffet Froid". After the success of "Les Valseuses", Bertrand Blier thought for writing a film exclusively for Gérard Depardieu. It is in this manner that the idea of filming "Les Valseuses" was formed. He created a record of sorts by writing this film's script in 3 weeks whereas he would normally dedicate six months of his professional time to write a good script. Buffet Froid can be best described through the proverb "What goes around comes around" as its protagonists are all involved in a cat and mouse game wherein the first victim is somehow linked to the last person who is punished.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote: "What makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved, or at least not primarily, but the fact that the world between them has lost it's power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them" I believe this film is attempting to express this sense of alienation through its absurd black humor, centered around an unemployed young man who has nightmares and is followed by anonymous death in his random comings and goings. Others have given various plot details, thus I will concern myself only with pointers and descriptions which may enrich your experience of this film.What is important to notice at first is not the absurdity of the action of the plot, which is very apparent from the first conversation of the film, but rather the concrete circumstances of the young man at the beginning of the film. He is unemployed, has no friends, and lives in an apartment building which had been until recently empty. Relationships he has and which he forms are without love, genuine care or meaning; they are merely people he bumps into on the way to eventual death (this includes most disturbingly his wife). He is not a part of anything, and makes no plans. This is a caricature of the modern, mass-society life, in which humans have no community in which their actions may be remembered after their death, no relation to others defined by the artifice which structures their world (i.e. living in apartment building, your neighbors are strangers, and you are 'closer' to people who may live halfway around the world, which is not how things have always been or will always be), and no connection in their lives to the means by which they are able to survive as an animal (i.e. your food shows up in supermarkets from somewhere and you buy it). What is life for this man? What awaits him? To be eventually erased it seems, blotted out without trace and forgotten as flies which we swat are forgotten. The films is terrifyingly funny in this sense, as we laugh at the empty absurdity of a life which has no story for the one living it, just a horrifying series of events which have no rational rhyme or reason, a life which the person living it accepts but does not embrace, cold in the world he finds himself occupying for a while. This may not seem like much of a recommendation, and yet for those who are interested in have their entertainment tainted with the challenge all good art poses for us as individuals, the view of life it espouses and which we find has become entangled with our own, making things stand out in our world that we had been unable to see before which prompt questions, often disturbing, we must seek to answer, 'Buffet Froid' is definitely worth checking out, whatever your final opinion as to its meaning or worth. It asks the viewer, "and what about you? You laugh at this man's life but how is your life fundamentally different from his? Is what you're occupying yourself with before death all that less absurd?"

Some viewers think this dark comedy is "boring" and "disappointing". Granted, this movie is not for everybody. But to say that nobody would like it is purely idiotic. Nobody has the same humor, and you cannot generalize when it comes to such variable parameters. To me, Buffet Froid is the quintessential black comedy, and it made me laugh from start to ending, despite its slow tempo and absurd-like tone. If I had to compare it with American dark comedies, I would say Fargo comes pretty close. I would also suggest the following movies for those who enjoyed Buffet Froid: Barton Fink, Happiness, Delicatessen, Dr Strangelove, Carne, Cible Emouvante and Man Bites Dog.

BUFFET FROID is a masterpiece, nothing else. Director Bertrand Blier uses his talent mostly in the dialogues. One catch phrase after another, the screenplay is full of surprises. And don't try to expect something because surely it will be the opposite. Depardieu is terrific with a lot of flegme and energy. Since this cult movie, Blier tried to do the same over and over again. But this is truly the original one.