Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

Rating:
Summary: GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS....
Review: ...this film both bothers and fascinates as it tells the story
of a young man who will (in a very continental way) do almost
anything to see his wife happy. The film is beautiful to look
at and all the scenes seem very normal and attractive..but what
is going on is very strange indeed. This young couple go to a
restaurant...and add a pleasant fellow diner to their menage.
The three of them work at a summer camp for children and the
wife is seduced by a twelve year old boy. This is one of those
films which one goes back to time after time and finds fascinating and mystifying. The actors and performances are
simply perfect, but the film never fails to both delight and
disturb. Its world looks like our world, but many things have
gone askew. Prepare for an unusual experience.

Rating:
Summary: Thrillingly complex, thoroughly humourous, and well-crafted
Review: A wonderful look at the unconventionality of true happiness, this film will strike home with some and disturb others. It is at once a jab at both constrictive and "sensitive" men, matched and mismatched with warm and emotional yet manipulated and foolish women. Everything is set to right in the end, although some pairings will certainly surprise when viewed in the context of the beginning. Suffused with genuine wackiness and a nearly omnipresent joie de vivre, this film does not fail to tickle the funny bone despite the serious undertones. In the end this film resounds with an odd sort of hope by proving that of all of us, the so-called "experts" on life and love are usually the most mistaken about every situation we encounter.

Rating:
Summary: GOYH: Funny, Perceptive Film
Review: Blier creates a world that illustrates what men really know about women: Nothing! Depardieu and Dewaere deliver two brilliant performances that seem like one. They are friends joined by their common ignorance about what goes on inside a woman's head. The final twist and their ultimate realization of the futility of their mission is satisfying, as well as the other comic situations. The film's charm is that the humor is wild, but somehow never goes completely over the top. I highly recommend this comic gem. I don't think Depardieu has ever been better, and Dewaere matches him perfectly.

Rating:
Summary: The Sauerkraut is not working.....
Review: In 1978 when Bertrand Blier's "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" was released in the United States we were all bopping to the beat of "Saturday Night Fever" and the Bee Gees. It was also a time when the "foreign film" was what Independent films are today: the place to go for the daring, the obscene maybe, the intellectual...sometimes.(Haven't you wondered why so few foreign movies are released in the USA today?)
"GOYH" was something else again, though: at the beginning an anarchic though sunny comedy of manners and by the end a black comedy with big concerns on it's mind dealing in 1978 (mind you) with subjects that are still taboo in the USA in 2002!
The first scene of the film throws us into a situation that is already in progress: Raoul (Gerard Depardieu) is frantic because his wife Solange (Carole Laure),lanquidly eating her saurkraut: obviously unhappy or manic depressive or both.
Raoul is so desperate to make Solange happy that, when he spys Stephane (Patrick Dawaere) in the restaurant, he offers to bring him over to the table for Solange's amusement and pleasure. And so he does.
First there is just Raoul and Solange; then Stephane and Solange; then Raoul, a woman he pulls off the street to comment on what he's just done, Stephane and Solange...all sitting at the table in the restaurant. The exposition is accomplished so quickly and so absurdly that we feel we are watching a silent film comedy. Blier writes and directs this first extended scene with such expert awareness of timing and pacing that it takes your breath away and grabs your interest immediately.
Ultimately, though Stephane and Raoul do their best to make Solange happy, it's Christian (Riton Liebman) who is finally the only one who touches her heart. (Don't ask)
In order to make this hybrid comedy-drama-romance work the actors must be quick on their feet and possess charm and panache to spare. All those involved do and then some: Depardieu and Dawaere, both looking young, handsome and flummoxed, Michel Serrault (soon to make a big splash in "La Cage aux Folles"),as a neighbor who inadvertenly gets pulled into this caper and Carole Laure with probably the hardest role to pull off: part zombie, part plain-jane, part sex pot.
"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" is pain stakingly and downright seditious in it's refusal to adhere to any social or societal rules...and because of this, it must to be cherished and revered for these attributes even now; some 24 years after it's initial release.

Rating:
Summary: Random at first, but funny
Review: This seems at first to lack a real message at first, but is nonetheless quite enjoyable. It's very funny throughout, at times almost in a Monty Python manner, in that the action and plot are surreal and would normally seem both improbable and non-sensical. You will not want to stop watching, and when it's over, I think you'll be drawn back to watch it again. Certainly it is one of Depardieu's lesser-known films. I have rarely seen it mentioned, as it is older and, I assume, not sponsored with nearly the same amount of marketing as his bigger Hollywood films of more recent years. I think the obvious lack of attention this film receives adds to its innocence and appeal. For those seeking an enjoyable French comedy, that is touching, humorous and innocent, I would reccomend this film.

Rating:
Summary: I am very confussed
Review: Try as I might I will never understand french humor. Yes this movie was funny and yes the acting is excellent don't get me wrong but come on the whole 12 year old kid suducing a grown women thing??? I don't understand maybe I just don't think very deeply.

Rating:
Summary: I am very confussed
Review: Try as I might I will never understand french humor. Yes this movie was funny and yes the acting is excellent don't get me wrong but come on the whole 12 year old kid suducing a grown women thing??? I don't understand maybe I just don't think very deeply.

Rating:
Summary: This is a very funny one joke movie, which unwinds slowly.
Review: You will laugh out loud--unless you go "Huh?" And its a little erotic, too.