Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)

What makes Get Out Your Handkerchiefs special is how Bertrand Blier turns a seemingly simple marital crisis into a mischievous, melancholy, and oddly tender comedy of desperation—one that keeps slipping sideways just when you think you’ve got it pegged. Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere play their well-meaning schemers with a bruised, human sweetness, while Carole Laure’s Solange remains the film’s aching mystery, pulling the tone between farce and genuine sadness without ever announcing where you’re supposed to land. It’s unconventional in the way great French cinema can be: talky, playful, sometimes hilariously erratic, and then suddenly disarming, as if the joke has feelings. Fair warning, though: its central late-film provocation is deliberately taboo and will be a dealbreaker for some—if you can meet it as a daring, unsettling satire rather than a comfort watch, you may find it bracingly original and hard to forget.

Bertrand Blier is clearly aiming for a darkly comic, provocative riff on depression, desire, and the absurd bargains people make in marriage, with Depardieu and Dewaere playing it like a twisted buddy comedy. The problem is that the film’s “anything goes” attitude can feel less daring than dismissive, especially in how it treats Solange as a puzzle for men to solve rather than a person with agency. It’s also very talk-driven and deliberately airy, so if you need plot momentum, visual energy, or jokes that land cleanly, you may find it meandering and oddly weightless. If you can handle taboo material and you’re in the mood for a cynical, conversational French farce with occasional flashes of wit and charisma, it might work; if not, it’s likely to feel like provocation without payoff.