Dotsthavesp
I wanted to but couldn't!
KnotStronger
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
MartinHafer
The quote from COOL HAND Luke seems quite appropriate here. While some adore "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" (as typified by the mostly favorable reviews and the Oscar win for Best Foreign Film in 1979), others probably see the film in such a radically different light. To see it in this other light is perhaps seen by the "with it" crowd as evidence that an individual is devoid of taste and a Neanderthal. Yet, to those who hate it, the film is not just bad but evil...or at least very, very morally suspect.What I am talking about here is that in the second half of this comedy(?), the leading lady has an "affair" with a 13 year-old boy--and this seems to be a good thing according to the film. This is very reminiscent of "Le Soufflé au Coeur"--another French film that is adored by most "with it" people. However, in "Le Soufflé", the boy is not just a teen having sex with an adult but the adult in question is his own mother!!! Yet, review after review on IMDb for "Le Soufflé" describe the movie with such words as 'vibrant' and 'marvelous' as well as saying that it's 'a beautiful coming of age film'. For "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs", there are such appellations as 'clever', 'amusing' as well as 'fresh and surprisingly intelligent'. What part of morally wrong don't they understand?! Even if the rest of the film had been good (which, incidentally, it was not), how can such praised be heaped on a film that glamorizes or excuses sexual abuse? Now understand that I am NOT a French-basher. I love French films and they are my among favorite type of films (surpassing even the Japanese--which I also adore) and I have taken French classes to learn the language. But, in this one way, I think the French film makers have it all wrong. In fact, the recent glowing praise and support of Roman Polanski (who admitted to drugging and sodomizing a 13 year-old) illustrates this divide. Having worked as a social worker and then therapist with sexual abuse victims, this 19th century attitude towards the sexualization of children is quite sad. Sometimes and with some issues we provincial Americans are wrong...in this case, however, I suspect the French have something to learn from us about the way we have taken sexual abuse cases more seriously in recent years (though, of course, we still have a way to go).So if I was totally offended by the scenes that involved the 13 groping and leering at a beautiful (and willing) adult woman, what did I think about the rest of the film? Well, sadly, I didn't like it. The film has many absurdist elements that might appeal to some but will also leave many cold. Like director Blier's follow-up film, "Buffet Froid", so much of the film deliberately makes no sense and is intended to shock. If you like this sort of craziness, so be it, but the average person out there will not be particularly pleased with the film as it just seemed dumb and the characters seemed so unreal. I know that is the point the film makers intended, but that still doesn't mean I have to like it. If I want something goofy and insane, I'll watch a comedy like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"--this is absurdism but with the aim to make people laugh. "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" does not seem to have any such intention. It seems more intent on confusion and bizarreness instead of being a comedy--sort of like performance art instead of film.Overall, there is almost nothing to recommend this film (unless you want to see a young looking 13 year-old making it with an adult). Incidentally, the actress was 30 and the child was actually 14. Would you let your 14 year-old participate in sex scenes with a 30 year-old in a film? Wouldn't this seem like pandering?
MARIO GAUCI
This Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar winner from France is quite atypical material for such an accolade (though, admittedly, there was not much competition that year): not only is it a sex comedy, but a potentially controversial one involving both a ménage-a'-trois and paedophelia (hence, the title's suggestion of sentimentality could not be farther off the mark)! Being familiar with the equally 'naughty' GOING PLACES (1974) from the same team of writer-director Blier and male stars Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere, I knew more or less what to expect: the end result, then, is just as entertaining (and overstretched) but also, perhaps, a tad superior. Genuinely original and undeniably very funny, the films sees husband-and-wife Depardieu and Carole Laure going through a crisis because of the latter's perennial depression and resultant frigidity; the former sees a way out by asking perfect stranger Dewaere to become her lover, in the hope of relighting the woman's dormant passion. Still, while the two like each other, they begin to mope over their disservice to Depardieu and, soon, it's back to square one for Laure! The narrative takes an episodic form, wherein the trio first meet a flustered green-grocer – a pre-LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978) Michel Serrault – and manage to turn him into a lover of classical music (Dewaere is a Mozart devotee') and, later, a precocious teenage camper (Dewaere is also an instructor of Physical Education) who, picked on by his peers for being the son of an industrialist, is taken under her wing by Laure…and ends up being the one to provide sexual gratification for the unemotional woman, even getting her pregnant! The male stars – who find themselves bonding amid such an unusual turn-of-events – are delightful as the perplexed but earnest lovers; Laure, however, has the difficult task of balancing attractiveness with an ordinary and downright sickly demeanor. Perhaps the biggest visual gags involve the identical sweaters worn by most of the male principals from time to time (Laure gets over her particular hang-ups through knitting in the nude!) as well as the reaction of the boy's parents to his escapade – the mother becomes an amnesiac when she overturns with her car on giving chase (and eventually hooks up with Serrault!) and, following the son's announcement of Laure's impending motherhood by his doing (the woman having ultimately taken employment/residence in their house), the father is reduced to a wheelchair-bound vegetable. Incidentally, the very next day after watching GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS, I acquired another well-regarded Blier/Depardieu title i.e. BUFFET FROID (1979) – to eventually go along with two more films of theirs I own but have yet to watch (TENUE DE SOIREE' [1986], albeit in French only, and TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU [1989])
damien-16
If your ideas about sexual relations are fixed, don't see this film. Bertrand Blier turns everything upside down. No clichés here. This is relational anarchy at its most challenging. It's moving, it's stimulating and it is very well acted. Les valseuses was equally anarchic, but its tendency was rather unsympathetic. In Les valseuses, Depardieu and Dewaere were highly unlikeable. Here they are very likeable, and Carol Laure is beautiful in all her passivity.
merrywood
This is one of the many films where after you read the reviews you ask, "Did these folks actually see the same movie I did?"Further it won the Import film of the year Academy Award. Essentially this is outrageous junk that was not really understood by its audiences, like much of the tongue-in-cheek art that hangs in modern art museums. Audiences have no clue and do not wish to be taken as fools so they join the crowd and rave about something they can't actually grasp. In fact, there is nothing at all to grasp.This is a French import that does not intellectually translate into any entertainment language known in the USA about a pre-teen boy who screws his bored governess Solange. (Préparez vos mouchoirs, indeed).Seeing the Academy flip over this outrageous and tiresome film destroyed even the slightest desire I ever had to return to Los Angeles to view a far more important scene, the La Brea Tar Pits. In the flowerchild American society of 1978 it had the pertinence of soiled newspapers that line garbage cans.
