French (un)dressing

Avant-garde and New Wave-inspired French films can be challenging for some American audiences to understand and appreciate. But a French sex comedy should translate well on the shores, one would expect. However, Bertrand Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, from 1978, has the power to shock and alienate more people today than it did 42 years ago due to its controversial subplot involving a romance between a married woman and an underage boy. Our CineVerse group discussed this angle and others last week, as summarized in the notes below (to listen to a recording of that discussion, click here).

What struck you as unexpected, interesting, or even downright shocking about Get Out Your Handkerchiefs?

• It’s a rare kind of sex comedy. Here, the husband is willing to be cuckolded and supportive of another man’s intimacy with his wife. Strangers are brought into the couple’s bedroom and allowed to be intimate with a married woman. And a strange bromance develops between two like-minded men who think they can satisfy the same woman.
• The film is dry and deadpan in its comedic sensibilities, but as a sex farce and social satire it still can conjure big laughs with the right audience.
• Of course, for many the film stops dead in its tracks once it introduces a significant subplot in which Solange is seduced by and becomes intimate with a 13-year-old boy. For Americans and people in many countries, this crosses a disturbing line that makes it difficult to accept or watch what comes thereafter.
• Many will consider this a completely inappropriate and unlawful relationship that involves child rape because the boy is of a nonconsensual age. But consider that, at the time this movie was released, there was no age of consent legally specified in France. It wasn’t until 2018 that France set the legal age of consent at 15 years old.
• So you have to put this film in its proper historical and sociocultural context: This relationship between an adult woman and a 13-year-old boy would not have been as controversial in France in the late 1970s.
• Yet 42 years later, it stands out like a sore thumb and ages the film considerably.
• The film is replete with ironies.
• Ironically, two adult men cannot satisfy Solange, yet she finds happiness and love with a much younger person – a boy whose IQ and emotional maturity are considerably higher than the buffoonish Raoul and Stephane.
• It’s also ironic that the two men end up forming arguably a stronger bond together, despite being sexual rivals, than the bond between either of them and Solange.
• Additionally, Raoul appears concerned about his wife’s welfare and happiness yet employs a male patriarchal approach, thinking he can cure her with sex or motherhood.
• There’s irony in the fact that both men would appear to be sensitive, sophisticated, and intellectual by virtue of their expressed concern over Solange as well as Stephane’s impressive book collection and their love for Mozart. Yet, each is revealed to be a romantic fool.
• It’s further ironic that, while it may seem to have the veneer of a feminist film, Solange as a character is given little to no agency; she barely speaks, and she seems to exist as a kind of sex object (often appearing naked) and matriarchal figure (knitting and acting subserviently).

Themes at work in this film

• People aren’t property, and you can’t make someone happy just because you will it.
• The inherent incompatibility of the sexes and the inability of men to understand women.
• “Even when he seems to be submissive, (Raoul’s) feeling over Solange’s unhappiness stems from the too-familiar tendency of a man to assume responsibility for his woman’s emotions. Solange’s sadness is not hers to own; it’s a problem that he must have caused and therefore must fix. When a female passerby reprimands him, ‘When women cry, you never understand why,’ he fails to learn a lesson,” wrote blogger David Bax.
• A bromance may be more satisfying for some than a romance between the opposite sex.
• The unpredictability of love. Who would’ve thought that Solange would find her supposed ideal match in a teenage boy?

Movies similar to Get Out Your Handkerchiefs

• Lolita
• In a Wild Moment
• Woody Allen films, including Annie Hall and Manhattan, in which the main character often plays a neurotic lover who questions his ability to please women
• Stella Dallas, which has a similar ending

Other films directed by Bertrand Blier

• Going Places
• Buffet Froid
• Beau Pere
• Ménage
• Too Beautiful for You