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Review: Movie Review of My Dinner with Andre (1981); 110 Minutes; Directed
by Louis Malle; PG
Imagine a whole feature film based
on a single dinnertime conversation. As the movie opens, a inquisitive, somewhat
introverted writer named Wally Shawn (an underemployed and struggling writer
and actor) is walking through New York City streets on a late February
Saturday, when the new year has settled in and the skies are starting to get
brighter as spring approaches. He meets his more flamboyant and articulate
friend, Andre Gregory, who has traveled around the world, taking in Life but
absent from those who have cared about him and who have been influenced or
inspired by him in the past. There follows a witty personal and philosophical
discussion that keeps one's attention for almost two hours. Andre wants
people to just stop and experience, whereas Wally feels everything he
experiences by definition can provide enjoyment. Intriguing is Andre's
proposal for a network of underground ashrams, and his account of being
stripped and then buried alive, just for practice.
I recently had a personal
experience just like this. By situation, I was pretty much the Wally of the
event (well, not quite). My companion fed all kinds of ideas, such as the
significance of acting while I talked of polarities. Pretty soon, 157 minutes
had passed, far long enough for another art-house movie. I should have taped
it for the automatic "thumbs up" ¾ the
conservation was that good! Indeed, this prototype film is one of
the favorite of Gene Siskel and Robert
Ebert. (After my real life dinner, the restaurant
closed permanently almost immediately).
But see this movie when it shows
up on cable or PBS (it sometimes does).
Before Sunset (2004, Warner Independent Pictures and Castle Rock, R,
dir. Richard Linklater, 80 min.) shows again what can be done in a duo
conversation movie. I saw this on a day where the projector broke on another
film, but I should have seen it in July when it first appeared, because it is
very relevant to my own situation. In fact, this film is a sequel to a 1995
film “Before Sunrise.”
It starts with a booksigning of a fictitious (or maybe not) opus
called “This Time” by a handsome laconic author Jesse (Ethan Hawke)—in fact,
the book is about an encounter those nine years before in Vienna. This
time, Celine (Julie Delpy) appears again, and after the
signing they adjourn to a café for a “My Dinner with Andre” type
conversation. It gets philosophical as Jesse talks about how Buddhists and
New Age spiritualists want to leave all desire behind, and Celine sees
that as clinical depression.
They walk the streets and Seine
riverbank of Paris, continuing the conversation in some technically difficult
and long continuous takes, telling their stories for the past nine years
without showing any flashbacks. (I’ve been to Paris just twice—some of it
looks a lot like the Dupont Circle area in Washington--but did not
travel the same path myself, instead hanging around in the Bastille area.)
They get into love and marriage. Celine wants to be loved but get
away from the idea of the man as provider—she wants to love for the sake of
love, not family values. Jesse is not so sure, as his family and son have
become so important. Well, there is a plane to catch, a cab ride, and they
stop at her apartment, and she plays her song. You are left to imagine what
may happen next, but he will miss his plane and have a big fee for waiting
for the cab driver.
You see from this how the
screenwriters made a simple “here and now” plot (Linklater, Kim Krizan, as well as Ethan Hawke, himself a writer too in
real life, and Julie Delpy collaborated as a team to write what
seems simple but is not, and Julie herself composed the song). You want to
see more at the end, and there is genuine sexual suspense, which is left to
the imagination of the moviegoer. Hawke, with his super lean presence and
shirt that seems to invite opening, is especially inviting here. The
cigarette smoking of both characters was, however, a bit “depressing” and
perhaps unnecessary (but then, again, realistic, especially in Europe).
Now this all parallels my own
screenwriting projects, somewhat. I have a script that starts with a “My
Dinner…” beginning with me as the writer. The other protagonist is an
aspiring actor, and the story that remains is (with some ironic twists) a
story about how he will then go to the A-list. So
after the first 45 minutes or so I break away from restaurant conversation
and go to action, because I want to make the younger character a sort of
“hero” like on one of those TheWB “The
Frog” weekly drama series (and that could take more than a 3-hour film,
unfortunately for me). And I have flashbacks. But imagine a second half with
a “before sunset” formula, where I and the successful actor meet again,
wondering what we would find out about each other, and how common characters
might have figured into his success. Then you have this movie, again. It can
work in a heterosexual, gay, or bisexual setting, although sexual fungibility in
most story development is the exception, rather than the rule. Polarities can
make it work. Maybe I will try this experiment myself. After all, this
got made, and conceivably I could come up with the resources myself to
execute this formulaic method (you have to increase the sexual tension at the
end in layers, though). The problem, though (beyond the tension in the
ending), is that if you are going to create a hero, you really have to show
him become one (and use some moral ambiguity or irony in doing so in
manipulating the “writer” character to serve the domain needs of the hero),
and that takes $$$. The Frog has taught me that well.
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