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What might seem an already risqué love triangle between two misogynous men (Depardieu and Dewaere, repeating their successful teaming of "Les Valseuses") and a pathologically passive woman (Carole Laure) develops into a REALLY unconventional love quartet when a 13 year-old boy (Riton) is thrown into the story and wins the woman's sexual and emotional favors over the grown men, and nothing turns out quite the way one would expect.

Good reasons to see this movie: A) cliché-free, offbeat satire with brilliant dialog and surprise turns everywhere (director/writer Blier's specialty is, of course, épater la bourgeoisie, e.g. "Les Valseuses", "Tenue de Soirée", "Trop Belle pour Toi"); B) young, fit, ugly-handsome Depardieu's rounded performance; C) a very different approach to love and sex in movies, unlike the usual everyday stuff; D) wonderful Michel Serrault.

Favorite sequences: the opening scene at the restaurant, in which the offbeat dialog states at once this is not "another love story" (very honest of Blier to show his cards early on); the cheese war sequence; Serrault extracting all the information he wants from Riton's mother with one single question; Riton's young mates asking him about how it feels like to make love to a woman ("Are there hairs inside?", they ask). Minor letdowns: the so-so ending; Carole Laure's rather blunt approach to her apparently blunt but wonderful role (imagine Isabelle Huppert doing it!!); Riton's utter lack of appeal (he had a physique reminiscent of Benoît Ferreux, the boy in Louis Malle's "Le Soufflé au Coeur/Murmur of the Heart", but not an ounce of his charm).

As a footnote, it's interesting to remember that this film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which tells a lot about how much more open-minded American movie industry people were in the 1970s. Giving an Oscar to a similar film today would be unthinkable in sexually neo-prudish Hollywood of the 2000s(an adult woman falling for a 13 year-old boy WHILE being the lover of two other men!). Recommended for viewers who enjoy unconventional story-telling and, well, unconventional sexual situations spiced with a subversive sense of humor.

"Get Our Your Handkerchiefs" is a funny little film about the need for sexual gratification and all the insecurities and absurdities it entails. The humor is unapologetically raunchy, and yet the story retains all the sophistication of something by Lubitsch. But it's also quite touching; the dismal woman, it turns out, only wanted someone she could identify with, someone who felt the same need for intellectual companionship that was masked by her sexual dissatisfaction. The solution is provided by a 13-year-old wunderkind who, unlike the husband or his friend, knows how to relate to the woman, and their relationship is far more real and convincing that any other in the story. Bertrand Blier constructed a film that questions and ultimately debunks nearly every `rule' on relationships, and provides more than a few belly laughs along the way. In a nutshell, "Get Our Your Handkerchiefs" is one of the few sex comedies out there that actually has something to say about sex.

If your ideas about sexual relations are fixed, don't see this film. Bertrand Blier turns everything upside down. No clichés here. This is relational anarchy at its most challenging. It's moving, it's stimulating and it is very well acted. Les valseuses was equally anarchic, but its tendency was rather unsympathetic. In Les valseuses, Depardieu and Dewaere were highly unlikeable. Here they are very likeable, and Carol Laure is beautiful in all her passivity.

Solange is depressed: she's stopped smiling, she eats little, she says less. She has fainting fits. Her husband Raoul seeks to save her by enlisting Stephane, a stranger, to be her lover. Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange.

This is not a film that will appeal to everyone. Those who do not like seeing excessive female toplessness will not enjoy a large part of this film. And there are certainly some sexual situations that will be uncomfortable -- and could never have been filmed in America.

But this is a very original, very unusual romantic comedy. While the modern romantic comedy has a woman going through ups and downs before ending up with her dream guy, this is not that story... the central woman is pursued by multiple men with no real interest whatsoever. It is bizarre, and humorous in a twisted way.

"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" is an excellent piece of storytelling and a refreshing film. It flows freely and is full of interesting and engaging twists, one of which is surprising but serves well in tying it all together.

Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere play two gentlemen at the mercy of an oddly ailing woman, Solange. Doctors are no help, and the two men obviously mean little to her, but they keep at it and decide that what she needs is a child, which she cannot give birth to.

Things happen and as the story unfolds, it brings the viewer in closer and examines happiness from an offbeat angle. If nothing else, "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" is fun and engaging and should not be missed.

An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, a Golden Globe nominee, and a César winner for the music, this film is said to be what Rushmore wasn't.

Raoul (a very young looking Gérard Depardieu) is a husband who is trying to make his wife Solange (Carole Laure) happy. he thinks he can do it by arranging for Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere) to go to bed with her. She really could care less about either of them.

This absurd comedy just keeps getting funnier as the two try everything to improve her disposition. Nothing works. They even bring the neighbor (Michel Serrault) in on their adventure. The three of them eat and discuss her situation while she sleeps peacefully.

It is when they go out to the country to work in a camp for poor children that they find Christian (Riton Liebman, a 13-year-old in his first film), a genius who finally makes her laugh.

It gets really funny when they can't remember who slept with her last night, and she suggests that she sleep alone. They really don't mind, as their friendship is now more important than her problem.

She ends up sleeping with Christian, and natures takes it's course. Well, she was no match for his superior intellect and he played on her emotions until he got what he wanted.

If it is possible, the film gets more absurd toward the ending. It was hilarious throughout, but the ending was magnificent.

Every actor in this film was superb!

This Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar winner from France is quite atypical material for such an accolade (though, admittedly, there was not much competition that year): not only is it a sex comedy, but a potentially controversial one involving both a ménage-a'-trois and paedophelia (hence, the title's suggestion of sentimentality could not be farther off the mark)! Being familiar with the equally 'naughty' GOING PLACES (1974) from the same team of writer-director Blier and male stars Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere, I knew more or less what to expect: the end result, then, is just as entertaining (and overstretched) but also, perhaps, a tad superior. Genuinely original and undeniably very funny, the films sees husband-and-wife Depardieu and Carole Laure going through a crisis because of the latter's perennial depression and resultant frigidity; the former sees a way out by asking perfect stranger Dewaere to become her lover, in the hope of relighting the woman's dormant passion. Still, while the two like each other, they begin to mope over their disservice to Depardieu and, soon, it's back to square one for Laure! The narrative takes an episodic form, wherein the trio first meet a flustered green-grocer – a pre-LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978) Michel Serrault – and manage to turn him into a lover of classical music (Dewaere is a Mozart devotee') and, later, a precocious teenage camper (Dewaere is also an instructor of Physical Education) who, picked on by his peers for being the son of an industrialist, is taken under her wing by Laure…and ends up being the one to provide sexual gratification for the unemotional woman, even getting her pregnant! The male stars – who find themselves bonding amid such an unusual turn-of-events – are delightful as the perplexed but earnest lovers; Laure, however, has the difficult task of balancing attractiveness with an ordinary and downright sickly demeanor. Perhaps the biggest visual gags involve the identical sweaters worn by most of the male principals from time to time (Laure gets over her particular hang-ups through knitting in the nude!) as well as the reaction of the boy's parents to his escapade – the mother becomes an amnesiac when she overturns with her car on giving chase (and eventually hooks up with Serrault!) and, following the son's announcement of Laure's impending motherhood by his doing (the woman having ultimately taken employment/residence in their house), the father is reduced to a wheelchair-bound vegetable. Incidentally, the very next day after watching GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS, I acquired another well-regarded Blier/Depardieu title i.e. BUFFET FROID (1979) – to eventually go along with two more films of theirs I own but have yet to watch (TENUE DE SOIREE' [1986], albeit in French only, and TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU [1989])

This film is wonderful. Blier brings classic elements of French farce films into cuttings that remind me of Melville. He does a wonderful job of developing Solange, Raoul, and Stephane as caricatures...giving the viewer great understanding of how these characters will react in future situation. The eratic behaviors are completely acceptable on the same terms that the wild cuts...from dinner table to summer camp, and opening in a restaurant with no frame of reference...forces one to become involved in the story. So many Hollywood films 'do the work for you' so to speak. This leaves the movie experience stale. I'm not going to get involved in a film unless the director invites me to do so. Blier certainly does that. And the Mozart concerto helps. Gervase de Brumer.

"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" begins as a typical French menage-a-trois tale, then goes off in original and unexpected directions (about which it is best not to be spoiled beforehand - read other reviews cautiously). It's well-made and often funny in a deadpan, understated way, but it's certainly not for the easily offended. *** out 4.

I saw this movie several times, as it's a classic we can see quite often on TV. I just watched it once more last night.

What do we have here ? Les valseuses revisited. This time with Carol Laure instead of Miou Miou, but the same "ménage à trois", with the male ambiguous friendship, the frigid or depressive hysterical woman, and the outsider who reveals her. This time, the third guy is a young boy. A thin difference.

The only good thing in this movie is the performance of the guys, Depardieu and Dewaere. They are even better than in les valseuses. The character played by Carole Laure is uninteresting, and the young boy is really awfully played and boring.

Before reading the comments here I didn't know this little misogynist comedy won an important award in some foreign country, and I still don't understand what makes it a winner.

Too bad, as Both B. Blier, Depardieu and Dewaere can be found together in better movies. Just watch Buffet Froid, Beau père and of course 'les valseuses'.

4/10

Complex, very funny, sad, very French look at love and sexual dynamics, with terrific acting all around.

Gerard Depardieu plays a man who truly loves his wife, but can't understand her or her depression. So he decides to get her a lover to cheer her up. But it doesn't work, and now two men are bewitched and befuddled by the sad, repressed Solange.

Ultimately only a love affair with a 13 year old boy – who in many ways is the most mature character in the film – gives her joy.

Transgressive, uncomfortable, and tweaking both sides of the war of the sexes equally; men are fools who can only look at women through a narrow prism, and women are complex and weird to the point of absurdity, this is a film that makes me laugh and cringe (in a good way) in equal measure.

Tuck away your notions of morality and monogamy to enjoy this frisky conjugal caper. Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere are back as lascivious buddies, but their antics are much less violent than the bedroom games they played in "Going Places" (1974). Here they alternate nights with Depardieu's wife in hopes that she will conceive.

Writer/director Bertrand Blier is ruthless in his castration of the male ego. While "Going Places" exalted the amorous promiscuity and brutality of its two leads. This romp derides the macho efforts of the "husbands." They have the wife's best interest in their hearts. They even commit a crime to please her, but they come up unfruitful. Maybe us guys SHOULD get out our handkerchiefs.

That movie has give me lot of fun. It is indeed sometimes a little dull but it keeps me alive till the end. In my opinion that movie has got something in it - the feeling that sometimes it may happen for sure. Also in our society. I think it is a actual topic also with been mature or getting to it. The movie contains problems from usual life, depression and other facts that everyone has got a contact with it in their life. Préparez vos mouchoirs is the movie for people with open mind and different view for the life and surrounding problems during our life. Maybe it has got a clue for that kind of problems? Very brave clues indeed but the life is short and we must have fun of it. Everyone must have.

Describing the plot of this film is rather pointless, since it reads in black and white rather absurdly, even for a comedy. But it works! The acting is great, (including a handsome and youthful Depardieu before he turned into a sloppy behemoth), the jokes are funny and the direction and camerawork make you feel like you've been dropped into a Van Gogh. What I like about French movies or at least what i used to like, was their ability to transport you into their wonderful culture for the duration of the film. Over the past 20 years however, French cinema for many dynamic cultural and economic reasons, has slowly allowed its identity to slip away. If you've never been to France or are just yearning to take a return trip for 90 minutes or so, this film will give you as good a taste of the French way and outlook on life, as a 2 week Frommers trip.

I was 8 years old when I first saw this. Yes, my parents were asleep and we we're the first kids on my block to get cable. So yes, I tip toed downstairs in the middle of the night to watch this movie. I don't know what the adults though of this film, but all I knew, was this woman got naked in front of a child. Not only that, but sex followed! For being the only eight year-old in the room, I wasn't about to change the channel to watch cartoons. I guess you can say this was a coming of age drama if not a sad black comedy about sex, relationship, and finding sex and a relationship in the most unlikely places. All in all, I remember the movie (at such a young age) because of the subject matter. The overall story of the movie? Couldn't tell you. I wasn't listening to anything the actors were saying. I was just watching.

At different stages of our lives, we have all heard about the ancient tale of the mentally agitated king who wanted to make his daughter smile at all costs as she was feeling sad. This king was willing to do anything, pay any price to the man who would bring a smile on his daughter's face. Watching "Get Out Your Handkerchiefs", one gets the feeling that this ancient tale has come alive before our very own eyes albeit with minor differences. "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" is the modern day narrative about a hapless man who would go to any extent to render his wife pregnant as she is unable to bear any child from him. French director Bertrand Blier is famous for films where sex or sexual lives of his protagonists amalgamate with other existential themes. One watches with amusement the tug of war between two leading men, Patrick Dewaere-an intellectual with a beard who is a big classical music fan versus Gérard Depardieu-an ordinary person. In many ways, this film is the perfect example of the maturity of French cinema and its audiences as it is not so easy for any national cinema to handle the theme of sexuality when a child is involved. Hence it is not easy for viewers to decide whether this film is a classical case of being a pure work of fiction or a film influenced by reality. Whatever one might state, "Préparez Vos Mouchoirs" is the only film where a kid scores well than adult men in the field of sex.

That's good cinema...!!! That's a real way to think about another reality .. we don't need weapons knowledge but self-comprehension.. we don't need anything else.. we don't need extreme mean examples of human nature.. at least we don't need high tech killers & so many people being killed every minute on everyday films.. we're just humans.. and we should love being humans.. We should try to make money with human storys and not only speculating with extreme violence and threatening extremes.. Making films is such a huge responsibility that we should really think about it.. as a producer and as a spectator.. "How are we building the next generation reality.." if big budget means huge violence.. I just ask you to think about it..

I can't believe this movie made it like it was normal and acceptable for her to do that to a 13-year-old, pretty sick! If that were a male would go to jail. That is just sick! I don't like to see movies like this dealing with violating a chijld like this, it's sick! I know it's just a movie, but I don't like it. I would want her in jail if it were my 13-year-old son. The movie went on as if it was normal for a grown woman to kiss and be intimate with a 13-year-old boy, pretty sick and weird story line. The 2 weirdo adult guys she was sleeping with didn't say anything acted as if was normal for her to lust after a 13-year-old child. Smh Wow pretty sick!

Carole Laure is depressed and has no taste for anything except knitting sweaters for her partner. Her companion, Gérard Depardieu, offers her to Patrick Dewaere, who becomes infatuated with her, but her spleen and her moods do not change. They are ready to do anything to help her, because they love her as they say. They meet a 13 year old teenager, who will make things evolve and change.

Bertrand Blier has built a concept film where Carole Laure and Riton Liebman are at the center.

Bertrand Blier's talent is present: dizzying dialogues and interpretations for a story whose twists and turns lead, as is often the case with him, to a tragedy of the bourgeoisie, which here again is shaken and turned upside down. Under the guise of a comedy, the film is a drama through multiple components. As is often the case, music plays an important role, here with Schubert, and Patrick Dewaere's character who is a Schubert enthusiast. And reading (he has an entire collection of paperbacks).

We find emotion, tenderness, enormities. That the actors jubilate to provide, we feel it well. With dialogues still and always exciting and impressive.

This movie is quite similar to the American film "Rushmore," in that both films portray sensitive, intelligent young teen boys becoming infatuated with adult women twice their age. Major difference: Blier the guts that the director of "Rushmore" did not have.

"Rushmore," like most films about teen boys having crushes on older women, took the easy way out. The boy falls madly in love with his teacher, but the romance is never consummated. Instead, he encourages her, at the end of the film, to continue her affair with a much older married man. So, the message is the older men have the right to take advantage of younger women, yet not vice versa?

In Blier's film, the relationship of boy and his adult crush is consummated. Therefore, the film breaks the mold. "Rushmore" merely follows a traditional (and just plain worn out) plot pattern.