Director: Louis Malle
Cast: Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn
Have I Seen it Before: No. I’ve seen the Community episode “Critical Film Studies” several times, but that doesn’t count so much, that I’m not entirely sure why I brought it up just now.
Did I Like It: I can’t help but divide this review into two questions:
First, does it work as a film as I previously understood it. As a matter of objective truth, there is very little going on in this film either visually or from a story perspective. It is largely one set, with three angles on the characters as their titular dinner unfolds.
And yet, nothing happens between them, either. Wally (Shawn) expresses dismay at having been waylaid into having dinner with Andre (Gregory), but there is no catharsis—even temporarily—between the men before their meal comes to an end. I get no sense that Wally has anything resembling a deeper appreciation for who his friend is, and instead am convinced that if the world somehow became even crazier than it is and offered us a sequel to the film (2 Dinner 2 Andre: We At It Again, Y’all, anyone?), Wally would still be avoiding spending time with Andre.
And yet, I do find myself not looking away as the film unfolds. Maybe I want something more to happen, but I’m willing to allow for the possibility that I may be unreasonable for thinking it should unfold any other way.
Which brings us to my second question: is it a pleasurable experience. In the great divide of mysticism vs. humanism—let’s call it Team Wally and Team Andre—I am firmly in the Wally column. The pleasures of life can be experienced without abandoning your family to intrude upon the rituals of other people. In the here and now of 2020, Andre’s extravagances also seem wildly out of tune, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to harshly judge a film or any other piece of art for not sufficiently predicting what the current age would feel like, even if it got pretty easy for all of us to do so there for a while.
So I guess I didn’t really like it, in the conventional sense. But again, I couldn’t look away, and in an age where we are sleeping with our electronic devices at a far more severe degree than either of our protagonists (does this film have a protagonist?) imagined, that has to be some kind of magic, right?