Other Titles • Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980) • Mein Onkel aus Amerika (1981) • My American Uncle • Les Somnambules • My Uncle from America
Synopses for Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980)
1.
Following a pair of films (Stavisky, Providence) that were more conventionally narrative than his explosively experimental early works (Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad), French New Wave pioneer director Alain Resnais began a cycle of films beginning in 1980 (all written by Jean Gruault) that delved deeply into his philosophical and aesthetic concerns again. The first of these was Mon Oncle d'Amerique, starring Gérard Depardieu as one of three middle-class characters undergoing great degrees of personal stress. Presented as a docudrama of sorts with some pulp-fiction qualities, these parallel tales don't really resolve themselves within their own borders but gain another dimension of subjective resolution when Resnais ushers in a real-life scientist to discuss certain kinds of behavioral triggers in humans. The results are actually very satisfying and witty for viewers who can see the overt psychological elements not as a smug commentary on the action but a means of opening the action to a viewer's subconscious experience. Resnais takes the bold step of creating a new kind of filmed story here, and largely succeeds. --Tom Keogh
2.
Alain Resnais's MON ONCLE D'AMERIQUE may be the best all-around display of the director's unique narrative and photographic techniques. The film begins with still photographs appearing on the screen as a narrator gives a quick biography of each of the three characters in the movie: Jean, Janine, and René. They are presented first in their childhood: a picture of Jean collecting clams, a picture of Janine reciting poetry to her family, and a picture of René in his farm overalls. Then each character introduces him- or herself in young adulthood, and the film rolls as they take turns narrating their own biographies. From there, with frequent interruptions by Professor Henri Laborit, the psychiatrist who takes over as an external narrator, the film assumes the traditional third-person approach to its three subjects, following them as they marry and separate, have affairs, suffer, rejoice, have children, find success, fail miserably, and eventually meet each other. All the while, the psychiatrist-narrator adds fabulously absurd but simultaneously poignant existential explanations for why these characters do what they do. MON ONCLE D'AMERIQUE is a film in which everything has meaning. Every action, every word, each gesture, color, and feeling plays into the explanations of the psychiatrist. Thus, as the narrator explains the story, the same scenes roll several times, adding a touch of good-natured comedy to this sophisticated film.
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