Green Card: Passaporte para o Amor

Gerard Depardieu earned a golden Globe for his performance, but that is besides the point, because this French actor has played much better parts for which he never got lauded. Anyway, this is one heck of a forgotten romantic comedy from the early nineties, that definitely deserves more attention, because it still stands strong to this very day.

It's a romantic comedy the way the French would make them, meaning that there is lots of subtle play and wit. The story: French citizen Gerard Depardieu needs an American working permit and tries to get it by getting into a fake marriage with the lovely American Andy McDowell.

The good: it's simply splendidly acted and directed. With lots of energy and flair. Any bad? There is a bit of a dull middle part of the story in which nothing much happens, but the end is wonderfully enticing again. Gives me goosebumps and I am usually not someone who is easily charmed by romcoms. Highly recommended!

Director Peter Weir appears to have been 'Moonstruck' in his latest film, a fizzy romantic comedy about an inconvenient marriage of convenience between uptight, uptown Andie McDowell and rogue Frenchman Gerard Depardieu. When the INS comes knocking at McDowell's door the couple suddenly has just 48 hours to get acquainted and invent a mutual history; predictably, they fall in genuine love as well. It's an amusing, if somewhat one-sided courtship: Depardieu may be a slob, but he's a cultured, passionate slob, and because everyone except McDowell loves him on sight (and since there isn't any competition from her arrogant, politically correct, vegetarian boyfriend) it's only a matter of time before Depardieu charms her down from her ivory tower. Romantic comedy obviously isn't Weir's forte; he supposedly wrote the script with Depardieu in mind, but it's too bad the same can't be said for McDowell's underdeveloped character: an urban fairy tale princess waiting for the frog (no pun intended) to kiss her. The film nevertheless shows the same economy of style that highlights all of Weir's features, and it benefits from the winning presence of Depardieu, whose energy translates well into any language.

Gerard Depardieu and Andie McDowell meet and for mutually beneficial reasons end up getting married..he so he can stay in the country and she so she can get the rent controlled Manhatten apartment..alas they must convince the INS that their marriage is true so they get to know each other, grudgingly of course at first..until love intervenes. A charming movie that features a good matchup with McDowell and Depardieu..good date film too. on a scale of one to ten..7

A romantic comedy-drama really, with far fewer laughs and much more sentiment than typical for the genre, though seemingly based on the favourite romcom premise that two people thrown into a position of intimacy for an extended period will inevitably fall into a touching and romantic love no matter how incompatible they at first appear. Depardieu comes across very well, though really doesn't need to try very hard to pull off the fairly stereotypical 'big french feller' he plays here, and MacDowell is her usual droney-voiced, moody-faced self, there to look pretty but prim rather than inspire any great feeling. The story ambles along nicely, taking in most of the standard licks of the genre ? impressing the friends, the family, high jinks with the neighbours, bad behaviour and heroism, shouting and laughing together to illustrate how love can emerge from conflict. Not hugely funny or romantic, but very nice to see that a romantic leading man could still smoke, drink and eat lots of butter in health-obsessed Hollywood back in 1990.

Green Card is a good movie. Worth watching. The first time I saw it I wasn't impressed, but then watching it again I found it realistic and refreshingly charming, in that "simple/against the tide" sort of way that is so Peter Weir. He's also done The Witness, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show; and Green Card, most certainly, is another of his films about people who don't quite fit in their environment or in the world of their aspirations but are drawn into finding life where probably they were not looking for. The scene about finding the bathroom is both hilarious and very suspenseful. It's funny how in a house, or even in a small apartment, we're never quite sure where the bathroom is. Our first instinct is to ask, even though it probably wouldn't be a difficult move to find that on our own. Now imagine having to deal with that bathroom situation (something you only care about when you need it) pretending that the place where you're in is your house. It's almost like in those nightmares where there are so many doors but which one is the one that will take you to that next level you so much need but have not the slightest idea of what it might really be? I guess the metaphor here is that you keep on opening a chain of wrong doors until you find the right one for you. It's frustrating, but the door was always there, always, with the exception that you never noticed it. Just like in everyday life, love and spirituality might flash into your face as banal sight at first, but they're made of hopes and fears that are always bigger than us, unexplainable, maybe fate. We don't have control of it (the Greeks knew it), we're still the same but again we're not. And here we are, groping, surviving. How do you relate to people and to your present circumstances -- whatever they might be --that is what Green Card is about.