Mon oncle d'Amérique is a wickedly intelligent character study from childhood to adulthood of three individuals whose lives will intersect in love and business, and incidentally illustrate theories of behavioral psychology cheerfully presented by one Professor Henri Laborit and his existential lab rats. (“A being's reason for being is being.”) The three are Gérard Depardieu as a farm boy turned factory factotum, and Nicole Garcia and Roger-Pierre as a failed actress and self-centered intellectual, respectively. All are driven to enact their fate-flight, struggle, dominance-and sometimes to confound it, for as Laborit coyly remarks, signals that are easy for a rat to pick up are more difficult for a human. With guest appearances by Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, and Danielle Darrieux as angels of the id, and with the eponymous relative who never appears at all, Mon oncle d'Amérique is reminiscent of the playfully experimental narratives of Sacha Guitry.