Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch My Dinner with Andre
1981 · Louis Malle · My Dinner with Andre on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch Wally's face while Andre is still mid-story. (cutting)
Editor Suzanne Baron cuts away from the speaker constantly, catching Wally's eyes go flat with skepticism, boredom, or envy before he says a word.
Payoff: The cut to a listening face changes how you hear the story being told, before Wally speaks at all. In the reading: reflexive-vs-intensive-face. Deleuze calls one face intensive, always in motion, and the other reflexive, holding a single quality at a time.
Notice the camera never moves except to reframe slightly. (camera)
Jeri Sopanen holds mostly frontal, over-the-shoulder singles of the two men, so the rare adjustment stands out and pulls your attention onto a face.
Payoff: The frame becomes a listening device instead of a window onto a place.
Track the courses arriving and the waiter's silent movements. (setting)
Malle marks time with the meal itself, dishes, wine, an elderly waiter who has heard it all, since the film has no other clock.
Payoff: The meal's own rhythm is the only structure the film allows itself.
Listen for how long the film goes with no music at all. (sound)
There is no score under the conversation, so the room's low restaurant hum and the two voices are all you have to rest in.
Payoff: With nowhere to rest emotionally except the words, you end up listening harder than you expect to.
Watch the room dissolve into warm amber behind both men's heads. (light)
Shallow depth and source-plausible lamplight blur the restaurant into a soft glow, so almost nothing but two faces stays in focus.
Payoff: The dinner reads as a lit refuge, cut off from the cold city outside it.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the listener, not the talker. Wally's face is doing most of the film's work.