My Dinner With Andre

This movie has a reputation that precedes it. It is, in fact, a movie that consists almost entirely of a conversation between two people over dinner. You might think there isn't much to say about this movie: false.

My Dinner With Andre is a tame sort of experimental film in that way. I liken it to the Dada art movement in Europe following World War I, which challenged the very nature of art itself. This movie explores the boundaries of the definition of film to an extent. The two stars (Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory) each wrote their own dialogue and play characters with their own names. So, if they wrote their own lines and play themselves, are they really acting? And if the answer is no, is this really a film? This is what the movie is about actually.

Wallace (Wally) and Andre have not seen each other in several years, and during that time Andre has been on a series of journeys trying to rediscover himself and regain touch with reality. Wally has meanwhile been a struggling playwrite and actor, consumed with much more tangible aspects of reality. Andre imparts his disaffection with state of humanity while unconsciously revealing that he not only has the metaphysical wherewithal to take on a wild pan-spiritual journey, but the economic security to do so. Wally agrees about the sad degeneration of human relationships and social disaffection, but confesses that he has too many practical concerns and too many simple pleasures to let these issues consume his conscious.

The breakdown between the two characters is best summarized by their respective attitude towards the electric blanket. Wally relates how his new electric blanket is such a wonderful thing, a marvel in modern comfort. Andre responds that he would never use one; because it would separate him from the cold, anesthetisizing himself from it. By hiding in the comfort he would not be forced to imagine how cold and uncomfortable others are, thus separating himself from his fellow man. Wally responds that it gets cold, and life is full of so many difficulties, why should one thing of comfort be a bad thing? This conversation reveals that Andre has the luxury to reject comfort, while for Wally comfort is a luxury.

My Dinner With Andre touches on the relationships among wealth, art, and identity in very subtle ways. I come away with an intense disdain for Andre, who lauds his bizarre artistic exploits as only an elitist snob can. In all his searches for himself and his attempts to rediscover the essential in humanity, all he has accomplished is a wildly overinflated sense of his own experiences and a vast distancing of himself from humanity. Wallace is more likable, but also pathetic in his own right. He simultaneously bemoans and validates his life as a starving artist, happily relegating himself to a life of quaint comforts.

I have to give director Louis Malle some credit for remaining true to the nature of this film while attempting to give it some visual variety. That being said, I fell asleep while watching this movie the first time. I was watching it while sitting in bed at night, but that is what it is.