My American Uncle [Mon Oncle d’Amérique] **** (1980, Gérard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Roger Pierre) – Classic Movie Review 9138

Director Alain Renais’s offbeat, humorous 1980 film My American Uncle [Mon Oncle d’Amérique] is a character study of a technical manager at a textile factory (Gérard Depardieu), a self-educated actress (Nicole Garcia) and a writer/politician (Roger Pierre) in pursuit of their careers, spliced with segments of a lecture by the behavioural scientist Professor Henri Laborit and footage from other movies (with scenes from films featuring Danielle Darrieux, Jean Marais and Jean Gabin).

Experimental in form and subject matter, this controversial movie became one of Resnais’s most successful films. Even audiences and critics who dislike its style and reject its meaning can admire its technical brio in the editing by Albert Jurgenson and camerawork by Sacha Vierny. Renais seeks to use his intersecting stories of the trio facing difficult choices in crucial situations to illustrate Laborit’s theories of human behaviour and the relationship between self and society. What a fascinating, ambitious, clever film this is!

My American Uncle [Mon Oncle d’Amérique] is the winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury (unanimously) and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

Jean Gruault was Oscar nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen in 1981.

Also in the cast are Henri Laborit as himself, Marie Dubois, Pierre Arditi and Nelly Bourgeaud.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9138

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