I Want to Go Home

Adolph Green has, to put it mildly, never been much of an actor (remember when My Favorite Year stopped dead whenever he appeared?), but in this he doesn't act at all. He just yells and complains about everything in which Paris differs from Cleveland, as if saying that he doesn't like something and it's crazy is automatically hilarious.

Gerard Depardieu does act--as if he doesn't want to acknowledge he is in the movie and hopes no one else will notice. The woman who plays Green's daughter is as incompetent with her accent as with her acting--after living in Paris for two years, she sounds like an American child sounding out French for the first time. But, oh, doesn't she think she's cute.

One feels sorry for Linda Lavin, who is always nice, and who remains nice even amidst all this rubbish.

One of Alain Resnais' more mainstream films, including American actors and characters in a mostly English language script. It is deservedly forgotten. Quite frankly, it's garbage. Adolph Green (of the musical team Comden and Green, who worked on Singin' in the Rain and The Bandwagon) plays a curmudgeonly Cleveland comic strip writer who is invited to Paris for a gallery show on American comics. He hopes to finally see his daughter (Laura Benson), who hasn't spoken to him in the two years she's been going to college there. Benson finds her father lowbrow, though, and ditches him, hoping she can finally catch up to her professor (Gerard Depardieu). Unbeknownst to her, Depardieu is secretly a huge fan of American comic strips, and ends up inviting Green and his girlfriend (Linda Lavin) to stay with him at his mother's country estate. Benson, when she finds out, decides to follow them. The problems with this movie are many, but the worst one is that Green is an enormous, enormous jerk. He spends the whole film yelling at everybody, frequently complaining at as loud a volume possible about how horrible the French are. You know there's a problem when you want to bludgeon the main character of a movie to death within ten seconds of his first appearance. Second, Benson is a complete bitch. I think part of it is that the actress (whom I think is French, since she only seems to have appeared in other French films) is awful. She comes off as totally emotionless and unnecessarily mean (though I can understand why she wouldn't want to be anywhere near her father, she treats Lavin, who always comes off as a nice person, like crap for no reason). Third, Green's cartoon cats often pop up in animated thought bubbles to tease both Green and Benson. This is especially unfunny and hugely obnoxious, particularly since Green voices the cats with his awful, nasal voice. The film does get a little better as it goes on. The cartoons fade away and Green, who starts to appreciate France after he meets Depardieu, calms the Hell down. But it's still utterly unfunny and I'd like to forget it was ever made.

Before shooting "I want to go home", if Resnais had thought of keeping somebody in mind, it is quite possible that he must have had ruminated about both American and French public. "I want to go home" shows why French fascinate Americans so much. It is a fairly honest portrayal of why French have all the respect for Americans. It is so hard to believe that this comic film was made by Resnais. For the last five decades, he has remained a highly intelligent intellectual cinéaste who has excelled in making difficult films about memories. Watching his films can be likened to a concentrated reading of a "stream of consciousness" oeuvre. Not only will this film charm die-hard francophiles like Paul Auster, Johnny Depp, William Fiedkin, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and John Malkovich but also fans of comic strips as it is not so often that one comes across a feature film in which there is a happy marriage of cartoons and film. Through this quirky work, Resnais has advocated popular culture as in today's world Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Garfield are as relevant/necessary and useful for everybody as Flaubert, Stendhal and Sartre. "I want to go home" is a light film which provides a multiplicity of meanings for its viewers. On an elementary level it explores cultural differences between French and American people. On another level it is also a tale of an amicable reconciliation process which happens between a father meeting his daughter after many years. This emotional turmoil has been shown in a very dignified indeed subtle manner. Although it might seem odd, this film makes it absolutely clear that French have a penchant for admiring those American artists who have been ignominiously rejected/ignored back home in USA. One classical example is Samuel Fuller. He enjoys a bigger, dedicated fan following in France than in United States of America. "I want to go home" is a film which can be understood by all kinds of artists. It speaks of different arts like cinema, comics etc. This is why Resnais has collaborated with great artists like Enki Bilal, Jules Feiffer and John Kander. The highlight of this film is the fact that it shows how all arts are interrelated as well as mutually beneficial. In "I want to go home" the characters alternate between serious mood and comic mood. This is because people can't always remain funny or serious. Resnais makes us all imbibe a logical lesson that in our daily lives we have to react according to the situation in which we find ourselves. Lastly it is high time that it is said that although Americans might abhor French or vice versa, the truth is that both of them cannot live without each other.