Review of My Dinner with Andre (1981) by Zhanyi J — 27 Jun 2009

This is a film of ideas. its not your usual movie-going experience. wallace shawn (the cliffs of insanity!! guy) and andre gregory, discuss ideas over dinner. thats the entirety of the film. there are no flashbacks, no cuts to other parts of the world.

aside from a couple of minutes at the beginning and the end, the film takes place entirely at a dinner table at a restaurant. this may seem antiseptic and boring, but its truly 2 of the most intriguing hours you can spend watching a film, especially if you are a person that has ever spent time at a restaurant having an intriguing, probing conversation with another person, not just catching each other up on the surface events of each others daily lives.

not that the film doesnt deal with daily life; it is heavily grounded in reality. they discuss theater, art, human experience, referencing philosophers, literary authors, and other great thinkers. and in this sense it is a marvel of cinema.

how can something so presumably ordinary be so engrossing? louis malle (who made some of the most absorbing films ever made) directs from the writing of the 2 lead actors. I dont entirely believe that it was fully improvised as some say it was, although it is also hard to believe that a film like this was fully scripted.

the camera remains stationary at times but also moves and zooms at the most appropriate times, providing emphasis for the major points of the film. thats not to say that I agree with many of the things that were said in the film, but more than that I appreciate the approach, the openness with which the film transfers thoughts on all the issues it contains.