Bertrand Blier

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DarkImbecile
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Bertrand Blier

#1 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:42 am

Bertrand Blier (1939- )

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"Love is the most boring subject of all. Love stories are hard to do well, difficult to write, and always end up following the exact same patterns. However, with death you can surprise."

Filmography
Hitler, connais pas / Hitler – Never Heard of Him (1963) [Documentary]
Si j'étais un espion / If I Were a Spy (1967)
Les valseuses / Going Places (1974)
Calmos (1976)
Préparez vos mouchoirs / Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)
Buffet froid (1979)
Beau-père / Stepfather (1981)
La Femme de mon pote / My Best Friend's Girl (1983)
Notre histoire / Our Story (1984)
Tenue de soirée (AKA Ménage) (1986)
Trop belle pour toi / Too Beautiful for You (1989)
Merci la vie (1991)
Un, deux, trois, soleil / 1, 2, 3, Sun (1993)
Mon Homme / My Man (1996)
Les Acteurs / Actors (2000)
Les Côtelettes (2003)
Combien tu m'aimes? / How Much Do You Love Me? (2005)
Le Bruit des glaçons / The Clink of Ice (2010)
Convoi exceptionnel / Heavy Duty (2019)

Shorts
"La Grimace" (1966)
"Pour Alirio de Crisanto Mederos, Venezuela" (1991) [segment, Lest We Forget]

Web Resources
1979 interview with Diane Jacobs, Washington Post
2003 interview with Anne De Gasperi, Cineuropa
2019 interview with Ben Croll, Variety
Undated 2.5-hour video interview with Jon Amiel, DGA

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Kinsayder
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#2 Post by Kinsayder » Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:44 am

tojoed wrote:
Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:42 am
I was just wondering if there are any Blier admirers on the forum. He started to do great work - "Calmos","Les Valseuses","Get out your Handkerchiefs" - just when Truffaut and Godard were doing their least interesting work. "Mon Homme" is an amazing film which could be talked of in the same breath as "Last Tango in Paris", and "Buffet Froid" is as surreally funny as a lot of Bunuel. Sad to say, he hasn't been very well treated on DVD, but there is plenty out there. Anybody agree or not?
It's his Bunuelisms that I find most exasperating. Bunuel has a purpose and a target with his absurdisms; in Blier, it seems to be an aesthetic affectation, or a vague misanthropy combined with a dirty sense of humour. I often get the impression with Blier that I'm watching a bad joke well told.

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tojoed
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#3 Post by tojoed » Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:13 am

^ I don't think absurdisms need a point and a purpose. And I like a dirty sense of humour. The only criterion for a joke, surely, is does it make you laugh?

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pro-bassoonist
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#4 Post by pro-bassoonist » Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:59 pm

tojoed wrote:I was just wondering if there are any Blier admirers on the forum. He started to do great work - "Calmos","Les Valseuses","Get out your Handkerchiefs" - just when Truffaut and Godard were doing their least interesting work. "Mon Homme" is an amazing film which could be talked of in the same breath as "Last Tango in Paris", and "Buffet Froid" is as surreally funny as a lot of Bunuel. Sad to say, he hasn't been very well treated on DVD, but there is plenty out there. Anybody agree or not?
Here, here... Next to Techine and Denis he is one of the few directors that I always revisit with admiration. I've been hoping that someone would finally release a nice version of Mon Homme in the US so I can retire that Aussie disc but...I am still waiting.

Those looking to pick a copy of Un, Deux...might want to grab whatever is available at Amazon since the HMV disc is now OOP.

Pro-B

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Dylan
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#5 Post by Dylan » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:04 pm

I saw Get Out Your Handkerchiefs a couple years ago and I thought it was a very sharp and amusing take on sexual relationships. Considering what happens in the third act, the fact that it won the Oscar really surprises me (and then, even more unimaginable, the very next year having the even more risqué The Tin Drum also win). I'd certainly watch it again.

Several years ago I saw Too Beautiful For You, which I remember being dreadful, aside from Philippe Rousselot's cinematography.

Any thoughts on Beau Pere and Going Places?

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tojoed
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#6 Post by tojoed » Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:55 am

Dylan wrote:Any thoughts on Beau Pere and Going Places?

Sadly, I haven't seen "Beau Pere" because apparently the current DVD is a bit messed up. "Going Places"(Les Valseuses) came out a couple of years before "GOYH", and in it Dewaere and Depardieu play two roughnecks, whose bond is that they have no understanding of women and what they want whatsoever. It is both funny and tragic, with a great soundtrack by Stephane Grappelli. There is a decent DVD available currently.Give it a view, you won't regret it.

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Dylan
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#7 Post by Dylan » Mon Aug 25, 2008 12:51 pm

Well, Going Places is a fucking riot! Probably the most magnificent "dirty" "sex film" I've ever seen. If only every sex comedy were 1/10 of 1 percent as smart, perceptive, gleefully trashy, fearlessly and incessantly "offensive" and well-performed (and what a stroke of brilliance to have Django Reinhardt's violinist Stephane Grappelli compose the score). This must be what it's like to love John Waters films, or Apatow's garbage or American Pie spinoffs. Except this film is incredibly well-written with a unique grasp and perception of the perverse.

Alright, so I liked Get Out Your Handkerchiefs and pretty much loved Going Places... what's next? I want to see Beau Pere (I've heard the Sarde/Grappelli soundtrack for that, which is great), but it's not available.

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tojoed
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#8 Post by tojoed » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:45 pm

I'm glad you liked them, Dylan, I rather thought you might.

What's next? I think you'll like Mon Homme and Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil. As Pro-B says Un,Deux is OOP, but still available on Amazon marketplace, I think. Mon Homme is currently available from Madman.

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#9 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 15, 2020 12:59 pm

Posited: Notre histoire is the comedy precursor to the second half of mother!

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mizo
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#10 Post by mizo » Wed Jan 15, 2020 2:13 pm

I haven't seen the Blier, but I always thought the clear antecedent of mother! was this Bob Dylan Christmas video

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#11 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 15, 2020 7:36 pm

That’s the horror version of mother!, I was mistaken!

I do think Notre histoire suffers from the same inconsistent follow through on a high concept comic notion rooted in absurdism as his recent Le bruit des glaçons: here, characters narrating their actions and motivations as though telling a story about themselves, which is kinda funny and weird but then gets upended by a lot of rando strangeness that doesn’t really go anywhere (including rapidly accumulating mass hysteria); in Le bruit, Jean Dujardin is visited by the physical manifestation of his cancer, played by Albert Dupontel, as a real corporeal person— a good and bold idea, but a limited one. Both of these would have been better served as short films, though I kinda liked them both regardless as flawed failures of some interest. I think the reason Buffet froid doesn’t similarly collapse under the weight of its absurdist high concept is that it’s sustainable with new variations (characters respond to stimuli with the non-plussed opposite of whatever is traditionally socially acceptable) for its feature length

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#12 Post by domino harvey » Sun May 24, 2020 1:26 am

Dylan wrote:
Mon Aug 25, 2008 12:51 pm
Well, Going Places is a fucking riot! Probably the most magnificent "dirty" "sex film" I've ever seen. If only every sex comedy were 1/10 of 1 percent as smart, perceptive, gleefully trashy, fearlessly and incessantly "offensive" and well-performed (and what a stroke of brilliance to have Django Reinhardt's violinist Stephane Grappelli compose the score). This must be what it's like to love John Waters films, or Apatow's garbage or American Pie spinoffs. Except this film is incredibly well-written with a unique grasp and perception of the perverse.
I watched Les valseuses tonight and was stunned at how legit vulgar it is. I was more shocked that the film was able to keep its light, airy tone given all the miscreant misadventures of the central pair than I was by their specific exploits. A film this far removed from good taste can only be graded on terms of how thoroughly it embraces its excesses, and on that account it succeeds. Certainly I had more than one incredulous verbal response to some of the episodes, especially Jeanne Moreau's final scene, which is so trashy that I just had to throw my hands up in the air and laugh at it as much as with it in disbelief. And poor Miou-Miou in this is about, what, thirty seconds away from just performing actual pornography at any given moment in the film? I know many French actresses are notoriously fearless about sex onscreen but good lord imagine being a woman and being told you'd be perfect for this role!

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Swift
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#13 Post by Swift » Sun May 24, 2020 7:15 pm

I also rewatched this recently. I had hazy, fond memories of it from my teenage years but was also surprised this time by how crude it was (the panty sniffing scene in particular) and just how cruel the two males were to Miou-Miou's character throughout. I'd somehow sidelined that nastiness in my memories. I also didn't realise a young Isabelle Huppert was in this as the teenager who runs away from her parents in order to join the trio on their adventures. I wonder if this film had any influence on Y Tu Mama Tambien, although the male protagonists there are much more likeable (at least in my hazy memories of that one too!)

Speaking of Miou-Miou, domino I'd noticed you'd watched La lectrice recently. Is it available for streaming somewhere? I'd like to pay that one a revisit too.

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#14 Post by domino harvey » Sun May 24, 2020 9:14 pm

Unfortunately it like most of Deville’s films isn’t available commercially with subs. But it’s one I could see Arrow or Cohen releasing since it’s with Gaumont

And I think Blier’s upbeat espirit in this one makes it seem less brutal after the fact. I read yet another ridiculous summary of this film elsewhere that tried to tie Depardieu and Dewaere’s mayhem to a larger theme of shaking up the bourgeoise, which totes make 150% sense. Those silly bougies not wanting to be molested on the street or raped, what a bunch of squares they are! Glad someone finally took them down a peg with this film 🙄 When will people learn that Blier intentionally obfuscates any easy reading of his films? He has a genuinely askance way of looking at the world and I’m as convinced as ever that a lot of it is instinctual and doesn’t hold up to rigid symbolic readings, as he often willfully gets in the way of his own high concepts

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#15 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:37 pm

Of the few I've seen, Un, deux, trois, soleil is the Blier film most resembling a bridge between John Waters' absurdist internal logics and Todd Solondz' irreverently-skewed social examinations minus the depth of pathos, which is not a criticism on Blier's part- his intentions are just a bit more nebulous. The film never tops its first act, which manages to imbue all the ingredients of a manic cross-narrative setpiece culminating in one long gag. The film then takes off on an 'adventure' from the stagnant space the protagonist occupies at the start, ironically slowing down to an at-times lethargic rhythm as she attempts to 'escape' this rut. It's a rarity for Blier to flounder, as he typically sustains an erratic tone along a wavelength of consistent pacing, but it's forgivable for never grazing the asphalt of boredom; Blier continues to insert unpredictable visual cues, diverts us down strange fantastical avenues, and re-engages us with a running gag that's always accepted on the spot, delivered so perfectly with a slight twist that it's a triumph these don't collapse once. And while it's possible that my small sample size is not indicative of Blier's preferred gender to dissect, I was impressed to see him attend to women with his interest far more than men this go-round, despite the biggest Star in the film being one of the most idolatrous symbols of masculinity in cinema, period (itself a subversive gag, I suppose)!

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#16 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:59 pm

TWBB, you should move up Tenue de soirée in your queue

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#17 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jan 27, 2022 12:32 am

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:59 pm
TWBB, you should move up Tenue de soirée in your queue
Ha, that was the other Blier I took out from the lib today and chose which one to watch at random, so it's already on deck for tomorrow. Trop belle pour toi came in later today and is waiting for me to pick up, and rest I'll have to find on backchannels

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Re: Bertrand Blier

#18 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 09, 2022 12:33 pm

Of all the Bliers I’ve seen thus far, Buffet froid is the best synthesis of his absurdist anti-sociotypical x strategy. Going Places eviscerated antisocial/sociopathic behavior specifically filtered into toxic masculinity, and then had the two sociopaths in question become puzzlingly preoccupied and emotionally-sullen over their inadequacy pleasing a woman they’re using as an object for all kinds of assault. Tenue de soirée flipped the typical heterosexual love triangle dynamic in both on-the-run crime genres and rom-coms for a homosexual one, thereby minimizing the value of women by design to accentuate the similarity both types of films have celebrating male actualization without the mirage in place. Trop belle pour toi inverts expectations of love stories to focus on personality breeding love by separating it about ten notches from lust in beauty. This is accomplished through making the object of affections wildly less objectively physically attractive than the sexy wife, encouraging an ironically anti-superficial punchline of having one’s cake and eating it too excluding sex appeal (which of course nakedly discloses romantic films to be falsely posturing at a deeper True Love entirely internal, when this exterior allure is clearly a vital component going unacknowledged)!

Buffet froid in a sense is capitalizing on the crime genre for its backwards fun, but Blier spends a lot more time and energy carefully constructing a more chaotically-defined internal logic, one that we never fully acclimate to in a comfortable rhythm (I’d argue that he doesn’t so much provide easy access into such a logic elsewhere in his oeuvre, but usually enough to assist us in stepping back with a set of grounded perverse expectations). Here we are constantly surprised at how and when he goes in the opposite direction of our familiar goalposts, and how and when he implements predictable character reactions in line with emotional responses we can relate to without a filter of behavioral surrealism.

The picture is concocted of what appears to be every irreverent social idea thrown at the wall to see what sticks, which destroys the false notion that it’s a clear sociopolitical statement about society’s disintegration. Instead this nonlinear methodology feeds a reading where Blier’s erratic presentation of erratic behavior and demented logic reflects the disorientation we have over our own realities and the unpredictability ubiquitously-experienced as we encounter others’ behavior as completely foreign from our own. I see this film as an incredibly broad comedy aimed at demonstrating how alone we are, how through increased attention paid toward psychological insight in the decades since uncoupling from tightly-wound ideological markers, we’ve discovered just how ungrounded we all are from trusted constructs.

These are confused people who can’t trust others about as much as they can’t trust their own memory as distinguished from nightmares. The fluidity by which they greet one another and blend into the others’ wavelength doesn’t so much indicate an adopted symbiotic language in my eyes, but rather exists as an exhibition of how desperate we are to be a ‘part of’ any common logic- to the point where we become elastic in forfeiting behavioral conditioning or moral standings to adapt to whatever flicker of novel human light is in our vicinity (the key being 'new', the ease at which a character gets over the death of a spouse but frets over the death of a new lover is significant, the old clearly was not providing satisfaction and the new holds promise; though this is the definition of insanity, repeating a behavior of doe-eyed hope that another will fulfill that spiritual hole of identity-diffusion, and expecting different results) - which in turn recognizes just how insecure and replaceable those morally-based or conditioned activity are to begin with! The irony that with more freedom comes more anxiety is not specific to urban spaces or an eroding culture- it’s always been that way, we just didn’t see it.

Blier has always seemed more interested in inherent psychosocial qualities and utilized external sociological mores to expose them, and this film is no different. Also, Blier’s father playing inspector Morvandieu may be the best character in any of his movies. An easy lock for my [eventual] 70s list.

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tojoed
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#19 Post by tojoed » Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:15 pm

TWBB, I'd very much like to hear your take on "Mon Homme", if you get the chance.
If you can't get hold of a copy, PM me and I'll send you one.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#20 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:23 pm

tojoed wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:15 pm
TWBB, I'd very much like to hear your take on "Mon Homme", if you get the chance.
If you can't get hold of a copy, PM me and I'll send you one.
Thanks tojoed, I have all of Blier's work (I believe, at least what's on back channels) and plan to make my way through the rest of his filmography this year (will I be able to spread them out to digest each more fully, or divert back to my compulsions of binging, is the biggest question)- but I'll take your rec and prioritize Mon Homme soon!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#21 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:25 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:59 pm
TWBB, you should move up Tenue de soirée in your queue
domino, I'm curious what made you prompt this viewing in response to my reading of Un, deux, trois, soleil? I'm not entirely sure I grasped the connection, unless it's related to what I said above

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#22 Post by Walter Kurtz » Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:24 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 12:33 pm
more chaotically-defined internal logic.
Chaos is a thing - or things - or collection of things - or processes of things that has a certain ontology. But to actually define chaos is a sort of epistemological conundrum because chaos is rather… chaotic. Can we truly know chaos? One day it is ontologically there… then another day… not there. And can you define something that you cannot truly know?

Ontologists usually want to eviscerate the absurdist epistemologists but most epistemologists think the ontologists are not psychosocial but are - in fact - sociable psychos.

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domino harvey
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#23 Post by domino harvey » Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:27 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:25 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:59 pm
TWBB, you should move up Tenue de soirée in your queue
domino, I'm curious what made you prompt this viewing in response to my reading of Un, deux, trois, soleil? I'm not entirely sure I grasped the connection, unless it's related to what I said above
Just based on your stray comment about Blier diverting from his usual masculine focus in the film you were discussing, as of course Tenue de soiree inverts the (absurdly pitched) heterosexual masculinity bolstering of his 70s films for a similarly feverish homosexual one!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#24 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:45 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:27 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Feb 09, 2022 4:25 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:59 pm
TWBB, you should move up Tenue de soirée in your queue
domino, I'm curious what made you prompt this viewing in response to my reading of Un, deux, trois, soleil? I'm not entirely sure I grasped the connection, unless it's related to what I said above
Just based on your stray comment about Blier diverting from his usual masculine focus in the film you were discussing, as of course Tenue de soiree inverts the (absurdly pitched) heterosexual masculinity bolstering of his 70s films for a similarly feverish homosexual one!
That's what I figured- but since my post also focused on relief for a female-centric film with greater interest paid to that gender, I was initially surprised watching Tenue de soiree when the main woman was arguably even more rejected and demeaned by the narrative than in Going Places, since she isn't 'wanted' on any level, even if only as a sexual object!

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Bertrand Blier

#25 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sat Feb 12, 2022 11:50 am

I would leave Le bruit des glaçons till last or better still on the shelf.

Despite being a fan of Blier and Dupont -almost to the degree of being an apologist for Dupont even at his most raucous - I found this one a total dud. What there is of absurdism is jettisoned as soon as pen hit paper and a potential high concept idea fluttered to the ground. I was hoping that it would reach the same sort of robustiousness of something like Sleuth for example but it fell tragically short and not even Chemotherapy could have injected any life into it.

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