A movie mocked by the mainstream and adored like a sacred text in the more eclectic lands of cinephilia, My Dinner With Andre is a perfect litmus test of a film: You truly either love it or hate it. Most folks will turn and run for the hills when the movie's simple premise is announced (two guys have dinner and talk...and that's it), but Louis Malle's most cult-beloved movie not only transcends this tricky structure - it plumbs dramatic depths of human connection in a fashion few (if any) other films do. 

In the picture, Wallace Shawn and Andre Greory discuss life, love, loss, art, the state of mankind in the universe - nothing is off-limits. Malle's camera never moves too far away from the action (most of the film is medium- and full-closeup), and the director infuses the picture with a deft pace and tone that makes My Dinner With Andre both wildly intimate and somehow detacted, as though we as an audience will never truly feel the complete pang of familarity in terms of what these two are talking about (and here comes the bigger question: Can anyone - even in life - truly hone in on the center of other peoples' discussions without her/himself joining in?).

Criterion has been Malle-crazy the last few years (two multi-film box sets and a handful of standalone releases), but in terms of the director's ever-growing reputation, My Dinner With Andre has been the most heavily-requested (a Wellspring DVD release of the film has been exceptionally valuable and out-of-print for quite some time). And while this edition doesn't have the extensive bells and whistles some of us may have hoped for in the back of our minds (not even a commentary? Come on, guys...), My Dinner With Andre nonetheless remains one of the greatest and most divisively lauded masterworks of the 1980s - a film that stuns with its lackaday simplicity.