Such a frustrating disappointment

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" begins as a typical French menage-a-trois tale, then goes off in original and unexpected directions (about which it is best not to be spoiled beforehand - read other reviews cautiously). It's well-made and often funny in a deadpan, understated way, but it's certainly not for the easily offended. *** out 4.

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.

This film is wonderful. Blier brings classic elements of French farce films into cuttings that remind me of Melville. He does a wonderful job of developing Solange, Raoul, and Stephane as caricatures...giving the viewer great understanding of how these characters will react in future situation. The eratic behaviors are completely acceptable on the same terms that the wild cuts...from dinner table to summer camp, and opening in a restaurant with no frame of reference...forces one to become involved in the story. So many Hollywood films 'do the work for you' so to speak. This leaves the movie experience stale. I'm not going to get involved in a film unless the director invites me to do so. Blier certainly does that. And the Mozart concerto helps. Gervase de Brumer.

What might seem an already risqué love triangle between two misogynous men (Depardieu and Dewaere, repeating their successful teaming of "Les Valseuses") and a pathologically passive woman (Carole Laure) develops into a REALLY unconventional love quartet when a 13 year-old boy (Riton) is thrown into the story and wins the woman's sexual and emotional favors over the grown men, and nothing turns out quite the way one would expect.Good reasons to see this movie: A) cliché-free, offbeat satire with brilliant dialog and surprise turns everywhere (director/writer Blier's specialty is, of course, épater la bourgeoisie, e.g. "Les Valseuses", "Tenue de Soirée", "Trop Belle pour Toi"); B) young, fit, ugly-handsome Depardieu's rounded performance; C) a very different approach to love and sex in movies, unlike the usual everyday stuff; D) wonderful Michel Serrault.Favorite sequences: the opening scene at the restaurant, in which the offbeat dialog states at once this is not "another love story" (very honest of Blier to show his cards early on); the cheese war sequence; Serrault extracting all the information he wants from Riton's mother with one single question; Riton's young mates asking him about how it feels like to make love to a woman ("Are there hairs inside?", they ask). Minor letdowns: the so-so ending; Carole Laure's rather blunt approach to her apparently blunt but wonderful role (imagine Isabelle Huppert doing it!!); Riton's utter lack of appeal (he had a physique reminiscent of Benoît Ferreux, the boy in Louis Malle's "Le Soufflé au Coeur/Murmur of the Heart", but not an ounce of his charm). As a footnote, it's interesting to remember that this film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which tells a lot about how much more open-minded American movie industry people were in the 1970s. Giving an Oscar to a similar film today would be unthinkable in sexually neo-prudish Hollywood of the 2000s(an adult woman falling for a 13 year-old boy WHILE being the lover of two other men!). Recommended for viewers who enjoy unconventional story-telling and, well, unconventional sexual situations spiced with a subversive sense of humor.