Lately, I've been reconnecting with a lot of former friends and acquaintances from high school and college. And no, I don't mean on Facebook. I mean sitting down and having an actual conversation, filled with meaningful dialogue, heart wrenching regrets, near-death experiences, and spirited philosophical debates. While watching My Dinner with Andre, sometimes I checked out from whatever they were talking about and let my mind wander to things relevant to my own life. By the end I was moved and refreshed, just like I feel after these dinners/meet-ups I've been having that are becoming more and more frequent as I get older.

I can't say I have anything in common with white male playwrights, one of whom is content…

"film is a visual medium" they say, "my dinner with andre" others retort. Wallace walks to the restaurant like a long-dead ghost wandering to no place in particular through a bustling city of the living, he appears uncertain and anxious and blue, two hours later he will walk out of the restaurant with his feelings not inverted but irrevocably various and eager and rose coloured. He looks at the passing streetlights with eyes that cry out "jesus christ, have these things always been here?" He instinctively connects these miraculous lights with memories that had long since been abandoned to the lonely chasms of his shadowy mind, left to rot under the label "unimportant/insignificant." He has dinner with Andre and they…

This whole conversation plays right in front of our eyes and there's never a moment in which it panders away. Yet the whole movie's primary focus is directed towards not what the film is about, but what it is that our subjects are discussing thoroughly. Louis Malle's My Dinner with André exposes a form of art which can be found right from seemingly simple conversation. It's an idea that on its surface seems very fairly small, but suddenly as we find ourselves pulled into this discussion, specific thoughts come into our mind that also go on to question how we're perceiving what we believe to be ordinary within our own lives, it's truly something more exciting than what could be…

I watched this twice today. Wallace Shawn speaks from a place of familiar futility. He's the voice of the audience. Upon first viewing, I somewhat disliked Andre. He has the luxury of purchased hipster reality. He participates in quack cult-like retreats in foreign countries as away to reconnect with his humanity. Wally struggles to pay his bills and is content with the simple details of life, but in turn never bothers to ask important questions or take any risks.

Having lived in poverty for many years I will say that questioning your relationships and goals is a privilege of the rich. Travel is impossible, you're lucky if you can make your way out to a party that you probably don't…

My loving wife bought me the Criterion some time ago ( with the caveat that I’d most likely be watching alone ). Well, an alone watch night came about last night, and I plucked the disk from the shelf with particular anticipation. The first thing that stuck me about this new Criterion is it’s unflinching accuracy in reproducing Malle’s tiny budget 16mm esthetic; there is no attempt to de-noise and de-grain the original negative to produce a more pleasing image; all the rawness and grain is there, just like I remember it on the screen so long ago at the Festival of Festivals.

I have a cousin that lived on the East Coast that I would summer with at his…

My Dinner with Andre ends exactly how I thought it would from the moment it started, and yet it still caught me off guard. Especially viewed now, nearly forty years later with influences and pop cultural osmosis abound, the film's setup makes its endgame relatively clear, and I expected the path there to be fairly predictable. At first it seemed like that would be the case; I wasn't expecting any surprises.

But goddamn did this movie win me over, and surprise me in the process. The balance of energies between Wally and Andre is delicate, constantly tilting one way or another but always coming back to centre. Immediately apparent is Wally's reservedness, his openness to the conversation making way for…