Neurobiologist and philosopher Henri Laborit talks about his theory of human behavior influenced by subconscious animal instincts of consumption, escape, struggle, and inhibition... Three stories: Janine grows up with her communist father and dominating mother, but defies them and runs away from home to try to become an actress. She is spotted in a play by the CEO of a radio station, Jean, who hires her and leaves his wife to start a relationship with Janine. However, when Jean is removed from the job, he starts suffering from kidney pain. Ultimately, Jean returns to his wife. Rene defies his farmer's family and studies to become an executive in a small textile factory, but is deemed incompetent and sent to a different factory, 600 km away from his wife and two kids, who do not want to leave their house. Upon being offered a job as a cook, Rene is so humiliated he tries to commit suicide in his room by hanging, but is saved by the maid. His family visits him in the hospital.
Included in Roger Ebert's Great Movies list, "My American Uncle" is not so much a film as it is a film study about behaviorism and its psychoanalysis, and why some people react the way they do, even when they themselves don't understand why they had a certain reaction. It is directly inspired by theories of neurobiologist and philosopher Henri Laborit, who intermittently talks into the camera and is heard off-screen, presenting his conclusions ("Through language, man has been able to pass on to succeeding generations all the experience that has accumulated over millions of years"; "In other words, our drives and our cultural automatisms will be masked by language, by logical discourse"). Unfortunately, while these theories are insightful and clever, this all makes for a very dry, didactic set of events, film-wise. The three stories are told just as an excuse to illustrate these theories, not to constitute truly inspired filmmaking. For instance, it is explicitly stated that Rene's and Jean's health problems (stomach ulcer; kidney pain) are caused by their suppressed psychological anxiety, stemming from their problems at job, since they are not in charge of their lives anymore, while the human brain is taught from childhood to dominate over others.
Some sequences are themselves almost subliminal in their expressionistic attire: two kids read during the night in their beds, so a grown man enters their room, unscrews the light bulb and takes it with him to ensure it will be dark and they will go to sleep; while carrying a plastic pillar in preparation for a play, Janine is found and confronted by her over-dominating mother who slaps her since she forbade her to become an actress, causing all the other theater crew members to protest in Janine's defence; after refusing to show her his island where he grew up when he was a child, Jean finds Janine there when he came there in his boat, while she stretches her arm out towards him and says: "Don't worry, I won't steal your memories", as she persuades him to show her around for a sight-seeing tour. Gerard Depardieu is good as the tormented Rene. In one great little idea, the director Alain Resnais shows a lab rat escaping from one part of a cage to another, to escape electric shocks, and then switches to the scene of Jean wearing a rat's mask (!) over his head, leaving his wife in the apartment to flee to his mistress, drawing a parallel in some foundations of animal behavior of trying to escape from the unpleasant. These disparate stories never come to a satisfying conclusion, and are only held together as so far to imbue them with Laborit's messages. Yet, like most message movies, "My American Uncle" is also not that cinematic, and is instead too schematic, regardless of the nobleness and insightfulness of its psychoanalitical message.
Grade:++
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