My American Uncle (1980)
Movie · 1980 · Comedy, Drama, Romance · 2h 6m · French
Curator score: 7.8/10 (17.9K ratings)
Overview
Professor Henri Laborit uses three people's stories to discuss behaviourist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety: René is a technical manager at a textile factory and must face the anxiety caused by corporate downsizing; Janine is a self-educated actress/stylist who learns that the wife of her lover is dying and must decide to let them reunite; and Jean is a controversial career-climbing writer/politician at a crossroads in life.
Ratings
- Curator score: 7.8/10
- IMDb: 7.6/10
- Letterboxd: 3.90/5
- Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
- TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Alain Resnais
Production
Philippe Dussart, TF1, Andrea Films
Cast
Gérard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Roger Pierre, Nelly Borgeaud, Pierre Arditi, Gérard Darrieu, Philippe Laudenbach, Marie Dubois, Henri Laborit, Bernard Malaterre, Laurence Roy, Alexandre Rignault, Véronique Silver, Jean Lescot, Geneviève Mnich, Maurice Gauthier, Guillaume Boisseau, Ina Bedart, Ludovic Salis, François Calvez
Curator Review
Verdict
A dense but unusually playful hybrid of fiction, essay film, and social theory. It’s best approached as a sharp, funny, intellectually restless study of behavior, anxiety, and social conditioning rather than a conventional drama.
Best for
- viewers who like challenging European art cinema
- fans of essay films and formal experimentation
- people interested in psychology, sociology, and human behavior
- audiences who enjoy multi-strand narratives with philosophical narration
Skip if
- you want a straightforward plot
- you dislike films that interrupt drama with theory or lecture
- you prefer emotionally direct, character-only storytelling
- you have little patience for ambiguity and digression
Overview
Alain Resnais turns a set of interlocking lives into a cinematic argument about instinct, social pressure, and the scripts people inherit. The film is constantly shifting between drama, commentary, and observation, but that instability is the point: human behavior is shown as something both deeply personal and mechanically conditioned.
Worth noting
What makes it work is that the ideas never fully smother the characters. The three storylines have real comic bite, melancholy, and social texture, and the film keeps finding slyly absurd ways to make theory feel lived-in. It can be demanding, but it is also unusually lively for a film this cerebral.
Bottom line
If you like cinema that treats form as thought, this is one of the more rewarding examples of that impulse. It’s not a puzzle to “solve” so much as a system to experience, and Resnais makes the experience feel nimble, ironic, and humane.
Top Letterboxd reviews
theriverjordan (4★) · 156 likes
“Mon oncle d'Amérique” is the rare film where form and character exist in service of theory. Of course - theory emerges from the mind of man, and so - is equally as fallible as the wills and desires of those who create it. Alain Resnais’ “Mon oncle” is a multi-narrative movie, with allegorical tangents that correspond to the philosophies of real life French neurologist Henri Laborit. In addition to fictional narratives within the work, Laborit himself appears to offer commentary… more
Robert Beksinski (4.5★) · 124 likes
Mon oncle d’Amérique is a film that I am almost positive is on par with some of Alain Resnais greatest works but it is also one of his most challenging thus taking much more effort and repeated viewings to fully grasp and encapsulate the magnificent scope of life he presents here. In many respects the collaboration between Resnais cinematic prowess and philosopher Henri Laborit's "theories on evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society"* combines to make a jarring… more Mon oncle d’Amérique is a film that I am almost positive is on par with some of Alain Resnais greatest works but it is also one of his most challenging thus taking much more effort and repeated viewings to fully grasp and encapsulate the magnificent scope of life he presents here. In many respects the collaboration between Resnais cinematic prowess and philosopher Henri Laborit's "theories on evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society"* combines to make a jarring… more
spap1 (4★) · 93 likes
i. life watches us at every turn, like the predacious bird,waiting to swoop upon it’s innocent prey,caught so off guard in it’s blissful ignorance,merely merrily going on about it’s daily exercises,those exercises which taint every minute of a daywith pre-decided tasks. the routine of the everyday,breeds a complacency so devout that it becomes a form of religion,and in that separated region of existence,we become vulnerable to any attack which might,just perhaps,… more
nick (4★) · 85 likes
Miles more accessible than Last Year at Marienbad or Hiroshima, My Love, My American Uncle is a relatively friendly entry in Alain Resnais' glorious filmography, further expanding his razor sharp, at times playful dissection of human conditions. With a wittily crafted style of intercut of multiple storylines as well as between voiceover and narration, Resnais successfully manufactured another one of his complex yet fascinating human study that's as inviting as it's highbrow and unreachable. My American Uncle ultimately deals with… more
Sally Jane Black · 72 likes
If you torture two rats, trapped in the same place, they will fight, much as if you drive humans into situations, circumstances, a whole life of pain and dissatisfaction, they will fight, get sick, and/or attempt suicide. What this film shows us, as if we were watching a university psychology lecture, is that Henri Laborit, a leading scientist on the matter, has a theory connecting these two ideas. It delves into the neurology behind it all, and it suggests that… more If you torture two rats, trapped in the same place, they will fight, much as if you drive humans into situations, circumstances, a whole life of pain and dissatisfaction, they will fight, get sick, and/or attempt suicide. What this film shows us, as if we were watching a university psychology lecture, is that Henri Laborit, a leading scientist on the matter, has a theory connecting these two ideas. It delves into the neurology behind it all, and it suggests that… more
Recommended similar titles
Last Year at Marienbad
For viewers drawn to Resnais’s fascination with perception, repetition, and the instability of narrative certainty.
Hiroshima Mon Amour
A landmark of modernist cinema where memory, voice, and feeling are fused into an elliptical dramatic form.
The Rules of the Game
A great ensemble satire of social behavior, etiquette, and hidden impulses beneath civilized surfaces.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
For its satirical treatment of class rituals, desire, and the absurd choreography of social life.
The Spirit of the Beehive
A quiet, psychologically suggestive film that studies how people absorb and internalize the world around them.
A Man and a Woman
A French relationship film with formal elegance and a strong sense of emotional patterning and restraint.
Cousin, Cousine
A witty, character-driven French comedy-drama about desire, social entanglement, and modern relationships.
My Night at Maud's
Intellectual, talk-driven, and morally probing, with characters negotiating desire through ideas and conversation.
The Marriage of Maria Braun
A sharp study of ambition, adaptation, and survival under social pressure, with a cool, analytical edge.
The Double Life of Véronique
For viewers who like poetic, psychologically suggestive films that connect inner life to larger patterns.
The Conversation
A paranoid, character-centered study of observation, anxiety, and the way systems shape behavior.
Topics
art-house, psychological drama, essay film, French cinema, nonlinear narrative, intellectual comedy, social satire, 1970s/1980s, human behavior, philosophical