Garçon !

The movie from time to time flashes across my mind after I discovered the songs of Yves Montand. He sang well and I always want to see whether he acted well.

Just my luck that DVD of this title was and is still not easily available in town. Why? It is not a movie for green whippersnappers or precocious imps but the well-aged wise. It was filmed some twenty years ago and I then exactly lacked twenty years' maturity. My big thank you to the 27th French Cinepanorama held in this month, after having gained twenty more years experience in life, now I know how to enjoy this movie. If I saw the movie right after it was freshly produced in 1983, I am very sure I would not understand the main plot or subplot, the observant director Claude Sautet, not to mention his ideas. After all, Yves Montand is now lying six feet under inside the cemetery Père-Lachaise in Paris and Jacques Villeret (Gilbert)'s head has gone half-bald in the French box-office hit "Le Dîner de cons" where he plays the tricked "François Pignon".

The restaurant setting reminds me the frantic and noisy kitchen in "Dinner Rush": shouting chef, cooking heat, fire and smell, the orderly mess, clicking sound of cutlery and crockery, conflict between waiters and chef.

There are usually many subplots in Sautet's works because he was able to capture human sentiments, especially those of ordinary people leading ordinary life, well in details and display it with an undertone of melancholy humour, even for serious subjects like human alienation, one of the ideas showcased in Garçon!.

Resourceful Alex was once a tap dancer, though not very accomplished, he seems to be respected in the dancing room. With limited funds and resources, this maturing restaurant waiter aspires to start an amusement park on the beach and he makes it! "Jerry Maguire" is the American version of Alex. Both men are capable of winning the heart of many. Every one around them likes them. They go around women one after one pretty successfully, it's nothing novel to see that they have two or three at one time. For instance, Alex has frequent trysts with rich poodle Gloria, from whom he tactfully draws out a free-interest loan of FFr100,000. Besides, he is concurrently after Claire, an English language instructor whom he knew seventeen years ago at her father's wedding on a boat. On top of these two relationships, he keeps a punctuated contact with the down-and-out Coline.

On the surface, both Jerry and Alex are candies to all. Cruelly and honestly, it is Gilbert, Alex's room-mate and colleague, who is sharp at pointing out their common blind spot: they are not related to anybody, both American Jerry and French Alex only think about themselves. What different is, Jerry's ending gives us hope while the final rainy scene of Alex at his well-received amusement park tells us what reality tends to be like: remaining alone.

When Alex is successful with his career, his dream park, all his women left: both Gloria and Claire return to their husbands, Coline follows a younger waiter of the restaurant. To Alex, the lyrics of the golden oldie should be revised to be "And 'NOT' in my hour of need, I truly am, indeed, alone again, naturally."

This is the third and final collaboration between Yves Montand and Claude Sautet. Director and star had worked very well together in Cesar et Rosalie and Vincent, Paul...; here they are doing a less-interesting script with too many characters and too many plot developments.

Montand is, as ever, very watchable; here he is a waiter in a prestigious restaurant who is trying to get financing to open an amusement park. It's fascinating to see how, when he gets flustered, he allows his slinky dancer's body to become stiff and clumsy. Nicole Garcia is the love interest, here she looks more sphinx-like than usual--what's going on inside that elegant head?

This is NOT a comedy at all. It's a full-time Claude Sautet drama and not less bleak on its twits than usual.

Having watched four Claude Sautet movies in a row, it does not feel any different than his other movies as some reviewers are stating.

The template for Sautet movies are slice of life stories with a strict detachment where you are constantly observing the main character interacting with a rich setting and well-written characters, but never living through it as a viewer. Is this bad? Not at all. The movies are great, but It's a very unsettling watching experience not really being there with the character.

For this movie, the featured restaurant is just a place and the job title just a working class job. It just could be anything else as it doesn't have no impact to the story. Alex (Yves Montand) spends just about 20% of the movie's running time dressed as a waiter. Unlike other Sautet movies he does not have a any significant emotional bond with anybody in the movie and not much going on for himself. It makes you wonder why this movie was made.

Apart from his gifts as writer/director, Claude Sautet possessed the ability to reinvent himself. A gap of five years ensued after the disappointing 'Guns for the Dictator' and nothing could prepare us for the miracle that is 'Les Choses de ma Vie.' This ushered in an extraordinarily rich phase during which he formed close relationships with, amongst others, the wondrous Romy Schneider(undoubtedly his muse) Yves Montand and Michel Piccoli, as well as having the immeasurable support of writer Jean-Loup Dabadie and composer Philippe Sarde. A complete change of tack came with the austere 'Mauvais Fils' with Patrick Dewaere. Devastated by the deaths of Romy Schneider and Dewaere, he again re-tuned his strings and resumed five years later with three understated and beautifully constructed films, the last of which is an undisputed masterpiece.

The question here of course is where does 'Garcon' fit into the scheme of things? It is certainly not a great film, least of all by Sautet's standards and is one most likely to be forgotten. It was the only one of his output, apart from his first, 'Bonjour Sourire', which no one seems to have seen(!) not to be included in the BFI's retrospective of a few years back.

It is lightweight to be sure but is both touching and appealing, mainly due to the presence of Yves Montand. He and Sautet had obviously clicked from the outset and although this is by far the least of the three films they made together, Montand's performance as a not-so-young waiter whose philosophy regarding women seems to be 'Service est compris', is one of his most beguiling, endearing and yes, enchanting. Colourful characters abound and the camerawork, especially in the restaurant scenes, is superlative. Being a Sautet film there is of course a certain melancholy and a realisation that relationships are ephemeral, especially those of the male/female variety.

This is not one of the works by which Sautet will be remembered but his last two critically acclaimed films guarantee that he went out with a bang, not a whimper.

As for M. Montand, whilst on his way to hospital following a heart attack that proved to be fatal, he reportedly said: "I'm a gonna but I've had a hell of a life!' A major part of his life was shared with audiences and we are indeed fortunate to have made his acquaintance.