Word: mon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Apparently, things are better in the spring. Perhaps it's because that's when Parisians go into heat: Jean-Claude, mon cheri, Je t'aime--et c'est avril!" The flowers are in bloom. No one cares about high prices or lobotomized policemen or anyone or anything else. All of the tourists are in love...
...conventions of the Pudding Show are like that--the student writers and performers can take all sorts of liberties as long as they stick within the chief boundaries. The audience is harangued when it hisses a pun: "Go drink some more champagne"; "C'mon, gimme a break, I have to say that every night." But the actors go right ahead with the next pun--that's what the people have paid...
...Mon Oncle combines art and science and art comes up short. When we're dealing with case studies instead of characters, we observe without compassion, we analyze without sympathy. Laborit tells us how these people will behave, so every decision they make becomes predictable. One of the male protagonists attempts suicide. Big deal. Laborit said he would, right? You can't argue with science...
...fact, if it weren't for Laborit's commentary, Mon Oncle would be a trifle of a film; a sweet, melodramatic little story. But, thanks to the good doctor, Resnais doesn't have to rely on a compelling plot or intriguing characters to hold our attention. We needn't strain ourselves looking for clues to motivations, we needn't ponder the out-come of events. Laborit knows all, tells all. Resnais displays his utter confidence in Laborit's theories when he has his actors don white rat heads to walk through some of their scenes. The director's joke couldn...
...performances aren't what one remembers best from Mon Oncle--it's the haggard face of Dr. Laborit that lingers in the mind. Toward the end of the film, he applies his theories more broadly, saying that large social groups--nations--only live to dominate and that they will stop at nothing, not murder, not genocide, not war. Resnais' camera then takes us for a sudden, completely unexpected, brutally chilling brief tour of the South Bronx. If Laborit's analyses seem a little too pat when concerned with the pointless, emotional cruelty we inflict on one another in our personal...