Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70228 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-01-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Thoroughly safe and mild compared to Going Places--the anarchic, something-to-offend-everyone earlier collaboration of Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and French director Bertrand Blier--the 1977 Get Out Your Handkerchiefs is an outwardly civilized satire with a heart so dark it's a wonder you can see the film's images. Depardieu plays the bellicose but well-meaning husband of a beautiful and depressed woman (Carole Laure) who wants to be pregnant but isn't. Hubby's solution to her woes is to talk another man (Dewaere), a complete stranger, into becoming her lover. When that fails to lift her spirits and fill her womb, the two men--both of them now slavishly devoted to the cult of her misery--bring in a boy (Riton) with whom Laure's character seems to be in perfect emotional synch. As with many of Blier's films, Handkerchiefs is an intellectually brutal but slaphappy variation on traditional comedies of manners. What makes this film a bit different was its obvious jibe at frothier French sex farces of the day (Yves Robert's Pardon Mon Affaire, for example, was released the same year) as well as then-contemporary adult comedy-dramas from the U.S. about the vicissitudes of relationships (Blume in Love, Kramer vs. Kramer). Seen in that context, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs looks like a wolf in sheep's clothing, though it isn't necessary to bring any context to Blier's acid wit. --Tom Keogh

From the Back Cover
Raoul (Gerard Depardieu) is desperate to shake his beautiful wife Solange (Carole Laure) from her terminal depression. Thinking that an affair might be the answer, he talks a stranger (Patrick Dewaere) into becoming her lover. But when neither man can make her happy, they take their menage-a-trois to a summer camp where Solange falls for a precocious 13-year-old boy. In the delicious anarchy of love and devotion, how far will everyone go to give a woman everything that she wants? Michel Serrault (La Cage Aux Folles) co-stars in this unconventional comedy written and directed by Bertrand Blier (Going Places) that charmed and shocked the Oscars and went on to become one of the most talked-about French films of the decade.

Customer Reviews

GOYH: Funny, Perceptive Film
Blier creates a world that illustrates what men really know about women: Nothing! Depardieu and Dewaere deliver two brilliant performances that seem like one. They are friends joined by their common ignorance about what goes on inside a woman's head. The final twist and their ultimate realization of the futility of their mission is satisfying, as well as the other comic situations. The film's charm is that the humor is wild, but somehow never goes completely over the top. I highly recommend this comic gem. I don't think Depardieu has ever been better, and Dewaere matches him perfectly.

GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS....
...this film both bothers and fascinates as it tells the story
of a young man who will (in a very continental way) do almost
anything to see his wife happy. The film is beautiful to look
at and all the scenes seem very normal and attractive..but what
is going on is very strange indeed. This young couple go to a
restaurant...and add a pleasant fellow diner to their menage.
The three of them work at a summer camp for children and the
wife is seduced by a twelve year old boy. This is one of those
films which one goes back to time after time and finds fascinating and mystifying. The actors and performances are
simply perfect, but the film never fails to both delight and
disturb. Its world looks like our world, but many things have
gone askew. Prepare for an unusual experience.

Funny but huh?
Gerard Depardieu is married to an unresponsive woman; thinking a lover might help cheer her up, he gets her one. When this doesn't work both men come to the conclusion that having a baby would do the trick. But this too fails. At end only a 14-year-old boy brings her out of the doldrums--and gets her pregnant. Highly improbable, but very funny. Won an Academy Award.