Release Date: August 8, 2003
Starring: Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Thierry Lhermitte, Melvil Poupaud, Glenn Close
Directed by: James Ivory
Written by: James Ivory, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (mature thematic elements, sexual content)
Le Divorce should go over well with audiences in the United States. The movie, like most Americans, likes to keep the French at arm's length: close enough to poke fun at them, but far enough away for them to do any serious harm.
This is actually quite an accomplishment for this very serious comedy of manners, because it is set in Paris, features a cast of characters that are at least three-quarters French, and boasts a substantial amount of French dialogue (subtitled in English). And even though Le Divorce, directed and co-written by James Ivory, seems well suited for American viewers, it is very much a movie with an international flavor.
The British-born, Australian-bred Naomi Watts, for instance, plays one of the two leads, Roxanne de Persand. Roxanne is a Californian living in Paris and married to a Frenchman, Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud), though shortly after the movie begins, Charles-Henri says au revoir to their marriage and the unborn child the pregnant Roxy is carrying.
At the same time, Roxy's sister Isabel (Kate Hudson, in a welcome break from typical Hollywood fare) arrives from the U.S. to help Roxy with the pregnancy -- but before long, Isabel, much like Charles-Henri, is wound up in the discrete world of extramarital romance, Parisian style. Isabel ends up falling for Charles-Henri's wily and seductive uncle, Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte), first accepting a position as his mistress and then falling for him wholesale.
Edgar serves as a font of wisdom where romance is concerned, extolling the virtues of the mistress in Parisian society -- a mistress is tolerated, for instance, though never acknowledged outright; she is viewed as something of a necessary evil. But the relatively harmless picture that Edgar paints for Isabel contrasts sharply with the pain that Charles-Henri's affair has caused Roxy.
The movie, which comes from the internationally famous Merchant-Ivory team (producer Ismail Merchant, working here with Michael Schiffer, and director James Ivory; Merchant-Ivory previously turned out Howards End and The Remains of the Day, among others), likes to deal with contrasts -- director Ivory clearly sees it as a way to dress up the very thorough lack of direction in the plot (there are several different subplots, including one involving the fate of a possibly valuable painting belonging to Roxy and another involving Mathew Modine as the disturbed husband of Charles-Henri's mistress, that seem to add little to the narrative proper).
He and co-writer Ruth Jhabvala, adapting Diane Johnson's novel, do make some interesting, if obvious, observations. The French have a rather casual attitude toward sex and especially extramarital sex, as illustrated by the offhanded response to Charles-Henri's affair. Likewise, the Americans in the story are just as casual when it comes to money. But neither side is as comfortable when the tables are turned: Roxy and her family see Charles-Henri's behavior as despicable, and Charles-Henri's family can't understand why Roxy is so concerned about the money that her painting might fetch at auction.
Though she is central to most of the story's developments, though, Roxy actually has very little to do, which might be why it feels as though Naomi Watts is somewhat underused here. Instead, Kate Hudson gets center stage, and she provides a warm blend of curiosity and naïveté that gives the movie some substance. Thierry Lhermitte is also quite watchable as Uncle Edgar, but aside from Lhermitte and Hudson, the rest of the cast does little to provide substance. A number of notable actors, among them Sam Waterston, Stephen Fry, Bebe Neuwrith, Stockard Channing, and Glenn Close, are in the wings, and although their time on-screen is enjoyable (if sometimes only for the sake of seeing a famous face), it is often far too short.
The viewer's reaction to Le Divorce will probably be mixed, because often it seems as though it's an empty movie with a veneer of European seriousness that exists only to make it seem as though the movie has important things on its mind. But when compared to lighter pseudo-European fare, such as Chocolat, it seems fortunate that this movie is grounded in reality, with a much more subtle style. And even if it is a hollow film glossed over with style from the Continent, that may just be the movie's point -- after all, as the movie's promotional material insists, everything sounds sexier in French.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)