GREEN LARD

GREEN CARD (1990)
dir: Peter Weir

Australian MAD #303, June 1991
w & a: Steve Lopes

Although Green Card was an American movie than took place in New York and didn't have any Australian characters, its director was Australian and it had an early release there. The movie was a romantic comedy made by someone who had previously done movies such as Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously, and looked more like those than a romantic comedy.

Brontë (Andie MacDowell) marries frenchman Georges Fauré (Gerard Dépardieu) so he can get a green card and she can get the apartment with a greenhouse, which she could only have on the condition that she's married. Their agreement is they never have to see each other after getting what they want. She later runs into him at his job as a waiter and at the apartment her nosy neighbor and doorman keep asking where the husband is.

Dépardieu had previously played Cyrano DeBergerac.

Brontë tracks Georges down since she needs him there for an appointment by the Department of Immigration and Naturalization, which is cracking down on sham marriages like this one, and they find they know nothing about each other, even their names.

INS is suspicious when agent Gorsky (Ethan Phillips) asks to use the bathroom and Georges can't find it. Brontë's lawyer (Robert Prosky) tells her the INS wasn't convinced and is coming back for a further inspection for two days, and they have to get up to speed and be on the same page. Once they get to know each other they find they have nothing in common. If anybody sees them in public and asks, he says he's to say he's an old friend in town for a political demonstration.

She's a vegetarian and he's a meat-eater. When they're grocery shopping, they run into her friend Lauren (Bebe Neuwirth) and Georges invites Lauren over for lunch. Later, Brontë has dinner with Lauren's family in hopes they'll donate their floral collection to her environmental group. Lauren shows up later with Georges as her date. He says he's a composer, they ask him to play something on their piano, and he embarrasses everyone with an avant-garde composition. Later, Brontë and Georges concoct a background story to tell the INS officers which includes faking pictures of themselves at various locales.

Brontë has a date with her real life boyfriend Phil and keeps Georges awake while he sleeps on the couch. He can't take it anymore and yells at them, and Brontë kicks him out. He spends the night on the floor outside the apartment. When they're discovered the next morning by Mrs. Kravitz (that's not really her name) they come up with a story that he locked himself out of the apartment. They then realize they have to go to the INS office for questioning, where they are grilled separately. He fails and gets deported, then they both realize they're really in love.