Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre is the grandfather of all conversation films. However, while this 1981 low-budget production successfully spawned several great conversation pieces (including Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Mindwalk), in this case, it is the offspring that outshine the inspiration. Even though My Dinner with Andre is original and unconventional in its approach, it is also – at times – unappetizing in nature. To call My Dinner with Andre a masterpiece (like so many other critics) would confirm the very principle (of falling victim to influence and routine) that the picture attempts to refute.
Throughout its 110 minute running-time, My Dinner with Andre solely depicts two men conversing over potato soup, French pâté, roasted quail, salad, and espresso respectively. These two men are Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who play themselves in the film. Wallace is a struggling playwright/actor who is initially pessimistic of how he and Andre are going to keep each other’s interest during the course of an entire meal. Andre is an old friend of Wallace’s and a successful New York theater director, who has just returned from an emotional, soul-searching journey abroad.
After Wallace expresses, in his opening voiceover, that he “doesn’t feel like playing doctor to Andre” and has “problems of his own,” he decides to “play detective” and continue to ask questions of Andre’s voyage. However, once Andre begins to open up and provide Wallace with intriguingly vivid answers, Wallace really begins to listen. From there, the conversation ensues, and Wallace becomes decreasingly reticent.
While 60% of Wallace and Andre’s conversation drips with profundity, the other 40% (which mainly spews from the lips of Andre) seems more like deliberately inflammatory psycho-babble. This is why practical audiences have a better chance of relating to Wallace than Andre the nut-job. When Andre lectures on being in church as “a huge creature appeared with violets coming out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails,” Andre and the audience are a complete disconnect. Further, his strange chats on leading cult-like “beehive” activities, being buried alive on All Soul’s Eve, and spending time with a Japanese monk – who defies the laws of physics – in the Saharan Desert expunge any relation between the viewer and the lead. Yes, the majority of Andre’s comments on human beings living “in ludicrous ignorance of each other,” “in a trance – like zombies,” and “in a psychotic dream world,” are thought-provoking, but other films have gotten the same points across indirectly and with more success.
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Article comments
1 - Howard Dratch
Actually, I remember liking My Dinner With Andrè when it came out. But I haven't sat through it since and that probably says a lot.
The one thing you say that I think needs even more emphasis is what a fine actor Wallace Shawn became. Yes, he carried this film and others even as a supporting actor.
My problem at the moment with him is living in Mexico without, right now, a DVD player. Wallace Shawn without his voice, speaking Spanish, loses much in the translation.
2 - Joanie
Wallace Shawn was fantastic in this film! He's proven himself a versatile actor with a wonderful comic flair. Definitely a must see film. Also check out his work in Crackers
3 - Bliffle
Wallace Shawm is properly viewed as the protaganist in this film, another fine one by Louis Malle. Maybe it's intended as a modernization of Strindbergs "The Stronger".
4 - Rodney Welch
Interesting point, Bliffle, particularly in light of the fact that I recently saw Persona again, and was reminded how it, too, very clearly drew from Strindberg's play.
As for Andre itself, I remember it as an unequalled masterpiece. Malle placed himself under a great handicap: film a dinner-table conversation, nothing more, nothing less, make it spellbinding in and of itself, don't cheat by dramatizing anything or bringing in other characters. It sticks ruthlessly to this idea, and the result is a film like no other. I love the Linklater films cited above, but I don't think of them as an advance on Malle's idea; I think Andre might actually look more rich and strange in comparison.
Malle's bare-bones approach also works like a charm in Vanya on 42nd Street, which finds the soul of Chekhov's great play by stripping it bare of conventional theatricality.
These are films that are so anti-cinema that they remind you again of what cinema can do.
I haven't seen Andre since it came out, mainly because I don't ever recall seeing it on video or DVD. I'm definitely up for a re-viewing.
5 - Joanie
Brandon, this was chosen as an Ed. Pick for the week.