In
MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, directed
by Louis Malle and co-starring director/actors André Gregory and
Wallace Shawn (who together wrote the unscripted-sounding script), two
men reunite in a chic restaurant and, over a fine and many-coursed meal,
talk about their lives. Some say the film is deadly boring; others find
it thoroughly engaging. I'm in the second camp. André and Wally could
not be more different, yet I see them as two sides of one person:
dreamer, pragmatist. Over the course of the evening, interrupted
occasionally by an elderly, cadaverous waiter (whose tics and blinks
suggest that he is bewildered by the men he's serving), each diner does
his best to explain how he’s coping with the world – André talks to
trees and Wally is happy if there’s not a dead fly in his cold cup of
coffee. When they finally part, Wally treats himself to a taxi ride
home. It’s nighttime. Gazing out the window, he narrates that he
remembers every block, every shop front from his childhood, it's if he’s
seeing the world for the very first time. It's as if, over his dinner
with André, Wally had somehow been, in a tiny way, reborn.
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