Review of My American Uncle

I'm not usually that big a fan of Resnais' films, but this dissection of middle class France circa 1980 is quite engaging. The movie intertwines three stories, loosely connected: the story of a civil servant, that of a middle manager in a textile firm (Gerard Depardieu, in the most interesting segment) and that of an actress (Nicole Garcia, the least interesting one). The stories are commented by biologist Henri Laborit, who elaborates on how we respond to external circumstances in modern society and at one point compares the reactions of the characters to the pressures of society to those of rats in a laboratory. (The constant references to actors in French classical cinema is less interesting, as cinephilia seems to be a particular French obsession). Laborit's theories might be outdated or naive, but they make a funny counterpoint to the action. I came out of the movie with the idea of modern capitalist society as a pressure cooker to those who want to play high in the game - nothing new, but it's well illustrated in the film. And to those of us old enough to remember the late seventies and early eighties, is fun to see back the clothes, the cars, etc., that people use back then on the screen.