Préparez vos mouchoirs

Plot synopsis:
Raoul and his wife Solange are eating in a restaurant when Raoul expresses concern with Solange's apparent depression, as she eats little, suffers migraines and insomnia, and also sometimes faints. He finds another man in the room, Stéphane, to be her lover and hopefully enliven her again. Stéphane is puzzled by Raoul's plan, but gives in to his desperate appeals for help. The two men take turns sleeping with Solange, and both try to impregnate her without success, believing a lack of a child to be the source of her depression. Stéphane also shares his love for the music of Mozart and Pocket Books with the two and their neighbour grocer. The music inspires the men, but not Solange.
Raoul, Solange, and Stéphane work at a boys' camp in the summer, where they meet a 13-year-old math prodigy named Christian Belœil, who is bullied by the other boys. Solange becomes protective of Christian and one night lets him sleep in her bed. She awakes to find Christian exploring her body and scolds him. They make up and have sex, despite a drastic age difference. Afterwards, Solange becomes dependent on the boy, to the point where Raoul, Stéphane, and she kidnap him from his boarding school. Christian eventually impregnates her, and the film ends with Raoul and Stéphane walking away after serving six months in prison.

Tags: romantic, comedy

Review:
Offbeat Comedy About Love and Sex à la Bertrand Blier.
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..
"Get Our Your Handkerchiefs" is a funny little film about the need for sexual gratification and all the insecurities and absurdities it entails.
But it's also quite touching; the dismal woman, it turns out, only wanted someone she could identify with, someone who felt the same need for intellectual companionship that was masked by her sexual dissatisfaction.
The solution is provided by a 13-year-old wunderkind who, unlike the husband or his friend, knows how to relate to the woman, and their relationship is far more real and convincing that any other in the story.
Bertrand Blier constructed a film that questions and ultimately debunks nearly every `rule' on relationships, and provides more than a few belly laughs along the way.
Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange.This is not a film that will appeal to everyone.
And there are certainly some sexual situations that will be uncomfortable -- and could never have been filmed in America.But this is a very original, very unusual romantic comedy.
While the modern romantic comedy has a woman going through ups and downs before ending up with her dream guy, this is not that story...
It flows freely and is full of interesting and  engaging twists, one of which is surprising but serves well in tying it all together.Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere play two gentlemen at the mercy of an oddly ailing woman, Solange.
Doctors are no help, and the two men obviously mean little to her, but they keep at it and decide that what she needs is a child, which she cannot give birth to.Things happen and as the story unfolds, it brings the viewer in closer and examines happiness from an offbeat angle.
The acting is great, (including a handsome and youthful Depardieu before he turned into a sloppy behemoth), the jokes are funny and the direction and camerawork make you feel like you've been dropped into a Van Gogh.
What I like about French movies or at least what i used to like, was their ability to transport you into their wonderful culture for the duration of the film.
If you've never been to France or are just yearning to take a return trip for 90 minutes or so, this film will give you as good a taste of the French way and outlook on life, as a 2 week Frommers trip..
This movie is quite similar to the American film "Rushmore," in that both films portray sensitive, intelligent young teen boys becoming infatuated with adult women twice their age.
Major difference: Blier the guts that the director of "Rushmore" did not have."Rushmore," like most films about teen boys having crushes on older women, took the easy way out.
So, the message is the older men have the right to take advantage of younger women, yet not vice versa?In Blier's film, the relationship of boy and his adult crush is consummated.
Préparez vos mouchoirs is the movie for people with open mind and different view for the life and surrounding problems during our life.
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.
An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, a Golden Globe nominee, and a César winner for the music, this film is said to be what Rushmore wasn't.Raoul (a very young looking Gérard Depardieu) is a husband who is trying to make his wife Solange (Carole Laure) happy.
The three of them eat and discuss her situation while she sleeps peacefully.It is when they go out to the country to work in a camp for poor children that they find Christian (Riton Liebman, a 13-year-old in his first film), a genius who finally makes her laugh.It gets really funny when they can't remember who slept with her last night, and she suggests that she sleep alone.
Well, she was no match for his superior intellect and he played on her emotions until he got what he wanted.If it is possible, the film gets more absurd toward the ending.
The ancient tale of the king who wanted to make his daughter smile comes somewhat alive in this Bertrand Blier film..
Watching "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs", one gets the feeling that this ancient tale has come alive before our very own eyes albeit with minor differences.
French director Bertrand Blier is famous for films where sex or sexual lives of his protagonists amalgamate with other existential themes.
One watches with amusement the tug of war between two leading men, Patrick Dewaere-an intellectual with a beard who is a big classical music fan versus Gérard Depardieu-an ordinary person.
In many ways, this film is the perfect example of the maturity of French cinema and its audiences as it is not so easy for any national cinema to handle the theme of sexuality when a child is involved.
Whatever one might state, "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" is the only film where a kid scores well than adult men in the field of sex..
Complex, very funny, sad, very French look at love and sexual dynamics.
Complex, very funny, sad, very French look at love and sexual dynamics, with terrific acting all around.
Gerard Depardieu plays a man who truly loves his wife, but can't understand her or her depression.
Ultimately only a love affair with a 13 year old boy – who in many ways is the most mature character in the film – gives her joy.
Transgressive, uncomfortable, and tweaking both sides of the war of the sexes equally; men are fools who can only look at women through a narrow prism, and women are complex and weird to the point of absurdity, this is a film that makes me laugh and cringe (in a good way) in equal measure..
"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).
I don't know what the adults though of this film, but all I knew, was this woman got naked in front of a child.
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.
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!
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]).
A thin difference.The only good thing in this movie is the performance of the guys, Depardieu and Dewaere.
The character played by Carole Laure is uninteresting, and the young boy is really awfully played and boring.Before reading the comments here I didn't know this little misogynist comedy won an important award in some foreign country, and I still don't understand what makes it a winner.Too bad, as Both B.
Blier, Depardieu and Dewaere can be found together in better movies.
In this amusing French comedy, a man finds a lover for his depressed and sexually frustrated wife in an attempt to make her happy but even the lover can't satisfy her.
She eventually finds happiness with a precocious 13-year old - only the French can make light of such a pairing!
Depardieu as the generous and caring husband and Dewaere as the lover have good chemistry and provide most of the laughs.
The two had previously teamed with Blier in "Going Places." Laure doesn't do much except sit around and knit (usually in the nude).
I think the recent popularity of films like the Science of Sleep, I Heart Huckabees and Being John Malkovich deserves to rekindle interest in this important but largely forgotten director.Through the late 70's and 80's, Blier single handedly kept alive the French tradition of Absurdist Theater.
While films like Being John Malkovich and I Heart Huckabees incorporate elements of surrealism, they remained tied to conventional narratives that require that ultimately everything ultimately make sense.
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.
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.
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 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.
What I'm really left wondering about is the character of Solange- who is she, and how did she get the way she is?
Ultimately, the audience is left to wonder along with Raoul and Stéphane while listening to Mozart and maybe sipping on a drink.
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.
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.
Delicate French Sex Comedy.
Raoul (Depardieu) and his wife (Laure) are in a restaurant.
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.
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.
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.
Some thirteen-year-old genius kid is introduced into the film and Solange responds warmly to him, both as a child and a lover.
The end.It is in no way a sexploitation film, although there's a bit of nudity.
Acting - no comments please .....A bizarre relationship between a 13 old kid and an imbecile married woman.
An equally imbecile husband who finds the third imbecile in the movie to make love to his wife.
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.
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.
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'.
But, in this one way, I think the French film makers have it all wrong.
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?
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.
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).