¿Quiere ser el amante de mi mujer?

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])

"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" is an excellent piece of storytelling and a refreshing film. It flows freely and is full of interesting and engaging twists, one of which is surprising but serves well in tying it all together.

Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere play two gentlemen at the mercy of an oddly ailing woman, Solange. Doctors are no help, and the two men obviously mean little to her, but they keep at it and decide that what she needs is a child, which she cannot give birth to.

Things happen and as the story unfolds, it brings the viewer in closer and examines happiness from an offbeat angle. If nothing else, "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" is fun and engaging and should not be missed.

"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.

Describing the plot of this film is rather pointless, since it reads in black and white rather absurdly, even for a comedy. But it works! The acting is great, (including a handsome and youthful Depardieu before he turned into a sloppy behemoth), the jokes are funny and the direction and camerawork make you feel like you've been dropped into a Van Gogh. What I like about French movies or at least what i used to like, was their ability to transport you into their wonderful culture for the duration of the film. Over the past 20 years however, French cinema for many dynamic cultural and economic reasons, has slowly allowed its identity to slip away. If you've never been to France or are just yearning to take a return trip for 90 minutes or so, this film will give you as good a taste of the French way and outlook on life, as a 2 week Frommers trip.

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.