Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)
Solange is depressed: she's stopped smiling, she eats little, she says less. She has fainting fits. Her husband Raoul seeks to save her by enlisting Stephane, a stranger, to be her lover. Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange. She knits. She does housework. Everyone, including their neighbor a vegetable vendor, agrees that she needs a child, yet she fails to get pregnant by either lover. The three take a job running a kids' summer camp where they meet Christian, the precocious 13-year-old son of the local factory manager. It is Christian who restores Solange to laughter
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Memorable, crazy movie
As Good As It Gets
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" begins as a typical French menage-a-trois tale, then goes off in original and unexpected directions (about which it is best not to be spoiled beforehand - read other reviews cautiously). It's well-made and often funny in a deadpan, understated way, but it's certainly not for the easily offended. *** out 4.
In this amusing French comedy, a man finds a lover for his depressed and sexually frustrated wife in an attempt to make her happy but even the lover can't satisfy her. She eventually finds happiness with a precocious 13-year old - only the French can make light of such a pairing! Depardieu as the generous and caring husband and Dewaere as the lover have good chemistry and provide most of the laughs. The two had previously teamed with Blier in "Going Places." Laure doesn't do much except sit around and knit (usually in the nude). This Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film isn't totally satisfying but is entertaining enough. The soundtrack features Mozart and Schubert.
"Get Our Your Handkerchiefs" is a funny little film about the need for sexual gratification and all the insecurities and absurdities it entails. The humor is unapologetically raunchy, and yet the story retains all the sophistication of something by Lubitsch. But it's also quite touching; the dismal woman, it turns out, only wanted someone she could identify with, someone who felt the same need for intellectual companionship that was masked by her sexual dissatisfaction. The solution is provided by a 13-year-old wunderkind who, unlike the husband or his friend, knows how to relate to the woman, and their relationship is far more real and convincing that any other in the story. Bertrand Blier constructed a film that questions and ultimately debunks nearly every `rule' on relationships, and provides more than a few belly laughs along the way. In a nutshell, "Get Our Your Handkerchiefs" is one of the few sex comedies out there that actually has something to say about sex.
What might seem an already risqué love triangle between two misogynous men (Depardieu and Dewaere, repeating their successful teaming of "Les Valseuses") and a pathologically passive woman (Carole Laure) develops into a REALLY unconventional love quartet when a 13 year-old boy (Riton) is thrown into the story and wins the woman's sexual and emotional favors over the grown men, and nothing turns out quite the way one would expect.Good reasons to see this movie: A) cliché-free, offbeat satire with brilliant dialog and surprise turns everywhere (director/writer Blier's specialty is, of course, épater la bourgeoisie, e.g. "Les Valseuses", "Tenue de Soirée", "Trop Belle pour Toi"); B) young, fit, ugly-handsome Depardieu's rounded performance; C) a very different approach to love and sex in movies, unlike the usual everyday stuff; D) wonderful Michel Serrault.Favorite sequences: the opening scene at the restaurant, in which the offbeat dialog states at once this is not "another love story" (very honest of Blier to show his cards early on); the cheese war sequence; Serrault extracting all the information he wants from Riton's mother with one single question; Riton's young mates asking him about how it feels like to make love to a woman ("Are there hairs inside?", they ask). Minor letdowns: the so-so ending; Carole Laure's rather blunt approach to her apparently blunt but wonderful role (imagine Isabelle Huppert doing it!!); Riton's utter lack of appeal (he had a physique reminiscent of Benoît Ferreux, the boy in Louis Malle's "Le Soufflé au Coeur/Murmur of the Heart", but not an ounce of his charm). As a footnote, it's interesting to remember that this film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which tells a lot about how much more open-minded American movie industry people were in the 1970s. Giving an Oscar to a similar film today would be unthinkable in sexually neo-prudish Hollywood of the 2000s(an adult woman falling for a 13 year-old boy WHILE being the lover of two other men!). Recommended for viewers who enjoy unconventional story-telling and, well, unconventional sexual situations spiced with a subversive sense of humor.