User Reviews

After stumbling on Beau Pere (1981) earlier this year, basically by accident, I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see more by this French director, Bertrand Blier. Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) was said to have similar themes, and I had actually heard of it before- as an Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. But the title suggesting a sappy romance had put me off on seeing it before I saw Beau Pere.

Sappy romance? Well, it's nothing off the sort. The film revolves around Solange, played by French Canadian Carole Laure, who's suffering an inexplicable deep depression with a range of negative symptoms. Her husband, Raoul, thinks an open marriage might cheer her up and enlists a stranger named Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere from Beau Pere) to be her lover.

Now, unlike some, the concept of open marriage doesn't quite shock me. What's really humorously puzzling is that when Solange seems uninterested in an affair, Raoul insists on it. Even when Stéphane doesn't think it's very wise, either. Both men, as well as a neighbour grocer, become a team working on Solange, trying to cure her of her depression, puzzling about women. Earlier in the film, Raoul pulls a woman off the street to ask her about the situation; she later drops out of the movie, but it might have been funny to see her stick with the group, making the team puzzling over Solange even bigger.

Half-way through the movie, Raoul, Stéphane and Solange work in a boys' summer camp, where they meet a 13-year-old prodigy, Christian. From here, the movie is mainly about Christian and Solange, with Raoul and Stéphane dropping to supporting roles- a little jarring at first, maybe. It's here where the movie shares a theme with Beau Pere, but with gender roles reversed- Christian and Solange become taboo lovers, and later, Solange and her team kidnap him, with Christian going willingly.

Now, of course hebephilia and statutory rape are sensitive topics these days, but as with Beau Pere, I don't think Blier's movie is defending it all that much. It's obvious Solange isn't in the best state of mental health, and when Raoul and Stéphane bitterly walk away after serving 6 months in jail, they realize the whole thing wasn't worth it.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is altogether a quirky, unique, and often funny movie. What I'm really left wondering about is the character of Solange- who is she, and how did she get the way she is? None of the characters can say for sure, they're not even sure if she's smart or "just plain dumb." It's said many times her depression is a result of having no kid, but why did she have a mental block against being pregnant? Ultimately, the audience is left to wonder along with Raoul and Stéphane while listening to Mozart and maybe sipping on a drink. Merci, Mozart.

This is one of the many films where after you read the reviews you ask, "Did these folks actually see the same movie I did?"

Further it won the Import film of the year Academy Award. Essentially this is outrageous junk that was not really understood by its audiences, like much of the tongue-in-cheek art that hangs in modern art museums. Audiences have no clue and do not wish to be taken as fools so they join the crowd and rave about something they can't actually grasp. In fact, there is nothing at all to grasp.

This is a French import that does not intellectually translate into any entertainment language known in the USA about a pre-teen boy who screws his bored governess Solange. (Préparez vos mouchoirs, indeed).

Seeing the Academy flip over this outrageous and tiresome film destroyed even the slightest desire I ever had to return to Los Angeles to view a far more important scene, the La Brea Tar Pits. In the flowerchild American society of 1978 it had the pertinence of soiled newspapers that line garbage cans.

I can't remember the name of those French pastries that are about the size and shape of an irregular softball. They look rich and filling but when you poke them with a fork -- poof. They deflate into insubstantiality. And I can't remember. Je suis desolee. And the Mexicans have a similar dessert dripping with honey and I can't remember what they're called either! Anyway, this movie is like that dessert. It's fragile, delicate, drifting from one absurd situation to another without much holding it together. It's amusing enough if you're in the mood for this sort of thing.

Well, I'll give two examples of what I mean. Raoul (Depardieu) and his wife (Laure) are in a restaurant. He's very intense as he tells her that something is missing from her character, maybe she needs a lover or something, because to him she always seems bored. All she does is clean up the house and knit distinctively ugly sweaters, one of which Raoul is wearing. Laure eats her sauerkraut, looking bored. Raoul has noticed another man, Stephane (Dewaere), giving Solange the eye, so he goes over and invites the stranger to take his wife home and make love to her.

There follow some moments of confusion. A passerby is brought into the scene as a consultant. But Stephane winds up at the table with Raoul and Solange and the proposal is made to her. She says nothing, just looks bored. Stephane is insulted that she's not interested. He's not just another GUY, you know? Raoul argues with him, and the two trade insults in this improbably situation, perfectly serious, like Hope and Crosby arguing about who's going to fight the gorilla in one of the Road pictures.

The three of them eventually establish an uncomfortable menage a trois. Not uncomfortable because the two men are jealous of one another, but uncomfortable because Solange clearly doesn't give a damn which one she sleeps with -- or whether she sleeps with any of them at all. Stephane is soon seen wearing an ugly sweater identical to Raoul's.

When she doesn't perk up, the men try to get her pregnant, without success. "WHY!" Raoul asks desperately. "Why does she do nothing but knit and wash laundry? She never reads a book or listens to Mozart." Stephane thinks for a moment and asks, "Is it possible she's just dumb?" Raoul is outraged. As if HE would ever marry a dumb woman! It goes on like this, while we smile and chuckle once in a while, then it gets derailed. Some thirteen-year-old genius kid is introduced into the film and Solange responds warmly to him, both as a child and a lover. (He winds up wearing her sweater.) Solange becomes the maid in the wealthy household of this kid and is made pregnant by him. Raoul and Stephane peek at the windows of the huge house through a locked gate, exchange one or two more quizzical comments, then walk away into the night. The end.

It is in no way a sexploitation film, although there's a bit of nudity. Carole Laure is made up and wardrobed in the dumpiest fashion imaginable, her hair a helmet left over from some production of Henry V, gowned in floppy granny dresses, often wearing what looks like a GI-issue watch cap. It would have been easy -- trust me -- to turn her into a sexpot. Check her out in the exercise class in "Heartbreakers." Gerard Depardieu is here big-boned but not beefy, and handsome in an easy-going way with his constantly unenlightened expression. Dewaere is suitably bookish. The smooth-talking sad-looking genius of a kid who finally rings Laure's chimes should be beaten to a pulp. What does he have that the rest of us didn't have at thirteen? I mean, aside from an IQ of 158.

Well, you might drift occasionally, and the second half is a little on the heavy side, like so many desserts, but you'll probably enjoy it in its uncloying sweetness and understated humor.

The quote from COOL HAND Luke seems quite appropriate here. While some adore "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" (as typified by the mostly favorable reviews and the Oscar win for Best Foreign Film in 1979), others probably see the film in such a radically different light. To see it in this other light is perhaps seen by the "with it" crowd as evidence that an individual is devoid of taste and a Neanderthal. Yet, to those who hate it, the film is not just bad but evil...or at least very, very morally suspect.

What I am talking about here is that in the second half of this comedy(?), the leading lady has an "affair" with a 13 year-old boy--and this seems to be a good thing according to the film. This is very reminiscent of "Le Soufflé au Coeur"--another French film that is adored by most "with it" people. However, in "Le Soufflé", the boy is not just a teen having sex with an adult but the adult in question is his own mother!!! Yet, review after review on IMDb for "Le Soufflé" describe the movie with such words as 'vibrant' and 'marvelous' as well as saying that it's 'a beautiful coming of age film'. For "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs", there are such appellations as 'clever', 'amusing' as well as 'fresh and surprisingly intelligent'. What part of morally wrong don't they understand?! Even if the rest of the film had been good (which, incidentally, it was not), how can such praised be heaped on a film that glamorizes or excuses sexual abuse?

Now understand that I am NOT a French-basher. I love French films and they are my among favorite type of films (surpassing even the Japanese--which I also adore) and I have taken French classes to learn the language. But, in this one way, I think the French film makers have it all wrong. In fact, the recent glowing praise and support of Roman Polanski (who admitted to drugging and sodomizing a 13 year-old) illustrates this divide. Having worked as a social worker and then therapist with sexual abuse victims, this 19th century attitude towards the sexualization of children is quite sad. Sometimes and with some issues we provincial Americans are wrong...in this case, however, I suspect the French have something to learn from us about the way we have taken sexual abuse cases more seriously in recent years (though, of course, we still have a way to go).

So if I was totally offended by the scenes that involved the 13 groping and leering at a beautiful (and willing) adult woman, what did I think about the rest of the film? Well, sadly, I didn't like it. The film has many absurdist elements that might appeal to some but will also leave many cold. Like director Blier's follow-up film, "Buffet Froid", so much of the film deliberately makes no sense and is intended to shock. If you like this sort of craziness, so be it, but the average person out there will not be particularly pleased with the film as it just seemed dumb and the characters seemed so unreal. I know that is the point the film makers intended, but that still doesn't mean I have to like it. If I want something goofy and insane, I'll watch a comedy like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"--this is absurdism but with the aim to make people laugh. "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" does not seem to have any such intention. It seems more intent on confusion and bizarreness instead of being a comedy--sort of like performance art instead of film.

Overall, there is almost nothing to recommend this film (unless you want to see a young looking 13 year-old making it with an adult). Incidentally, the actress was 30 and the child was actually 14. Would you let your 14 year-old participate in sex scenes with a 30 year-old in a film? Wouldn't this seem like pandering?

I am still wondering how I managed to sit through the entire movie. Story - bizarre.... Acting - no comments please .....

A bizarre relationship between a 13 old kid and an imbecile married woman. All she does is knitting sitting topless. An equally imbecile husband who finds the third imbecile in the movie to make love to his wife. A bored housewife who falls in love after a car wreck; it was upside down but she was intact enough to have sex with the first stranger that passes by. Come on!!!!! This is French slapstick for you folks.... I have no idea how come people give it a rating over 2-3. I rated it 1/10 because I couldn't rate it lesser. in my opinion it's -7 out of 10.