Bunuel1976 Review of Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)

GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS (Bertrand Blier, 1978) ***

[7/10 · 15 February 2009]

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])