Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

"Un, deux, trois, soleil" literally means "1,2,3, sun." Within the 1993 film directed by Bertrand Blier (Get Our Your Handkerchiefs) it occurs as a children's game in which those playing have to freeze on "soleil," so that the subtitles sensibly render it as "1,2,3, Freeze!"). If pressed, I could concoct a discourse on how this is a metaphor for the life of the protagonist, Victorine (Anouk Grinberg), the child of a mentally ill mother (Myriam Boyer) and a drunkard father (Marcello Mastroianni) proceeds through a series of jolting encounters with others.

Victorine is a fairly feisty youngster and manages to stop what is about to become a gang rape so that she can be deflowered romantically--for which purpose the gang's "specialist in love" Paul (the dashing Olivier Martinez just before he starred in "Horseman on the Roof") takes over. There is also another gang rape that Victorine's teacher (Denise Chalem) manages to stop.

The distance between thought and deed in the film is very short. There are many impulsive slum-dweller characters (the setting is the outskirts of Marseilles, many of those living there are Arabs), though the most chilling character is one who has a plan (involving documenting Paul at work).

Blier does not seem to have many inhibitions. His most famous movie (Handkerchiefs) involves an adult woman with a yen for a 14-year-old boy, and there are some intergenerational sexual (or seemingly sexual) relationships and encounters that will shock those who believe that adolescents are innocent here. Not to mention violence (which is generally fine with American puritans). And great tolerance for the addled but never nasty drunkard character that Mastroianni plays with a sort of childish wonder. (Childish wonder is not something Victorine can afford much of, though she has romantic fantasies.) That he can not find his way home is a running sight gag (neighborhood pranksters switch building signs, so that even when he can remember where he is going, he can't get there).

There is something of a linear plot, though it is not immediately obvious whether minutes or years have passed between scenes. With time distortions, ghosts, and the already mentioned instant transformation of thoughts into deeds, the ride for the viewer is not smooth. "Surrealistic" would not be amiss as a label, though I'd guess that Truffaut was an influence on Blier (at least the thought-magic of the mother's death in Shoot the Piano Player came to my mind, although Truffaut mostly portrayed fancy-filled boys coming of age, rather than girls).

I thought that there must have been two actresses playing Victorine at 12 and at 25, but it was all Grinberg, which makes her performance all the more impressive. Moreover, she was in reality 30 years old at the time the movie was shot! (I have not seen her as a schoolgirl in Blier's earlier (1991)"Merci la vie" or as a prostitute in his later(1996 )"Mon homme," --she was nominated for Cesar Awards in all three--or in anything else).

Martinez won the Cesar award for “most promising actor," and fulfilled the promise right away (Horseman) and has appeared in English-speaking movies as a "Latin lover" ("Unfaithful," the Helen Mirren "Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone"). Mastroianni used to be a "Latin lover," but was also a great actor and was very good as Victorine's sweet but addled father.

The music provided by Algerian singer Khaled works very well, too.

The video and audio transfers seem quite good. Other than some filmographies, there are no DVD extras.

© 2007, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD