My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre centres on two men meeting for a meal in a high-end Manhattan restaurant. Wally is a playwright and actor whose work has brought him only modest success, while Andre is a theatre director who once drew attention for his experimental productions before stepping away from the stage and travelling the world. The two were once close friends but have not seen each other in years, and Wally agrees to the reunion with some hesitation. Over the course of the evening, Andre describes his travels and the spiritual and group experiences he pursued abroad, while Wally responds from the vantage point of an ordinary life in New York that he finds unremarkable. Their exchange moves through questions of existence, solitude, happiness, culture and what gives a life meaning.

Louis Malle directed the film, the eleventh of the thirteen he made, following Atlantic City and preceding Au Revoir les Enfants. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory wrote the screenplay and play versions of themselves, joined by Jean Lenauer as the waiter, Roy Butler as the bartender and Cindy Lou Adkins as the coat-check girl. The film grossed about five million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.7 out of 10 from roughly 25,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes, indicating a durable reputation among viewers.