| LE DIVORCE |
 2003 - USA / FranceDirector: James Ivory -Reviewed by Rachel
Le Divorce follows the story of two sisters, Roxeanne de Persand (Naomi Watts) and Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson), living in Paris over a period of about six months. Isabel is a young Californian visiting her older sister, Roxeanne, who is pregnant and suffering because her romantic French husband (Charles-Henri) has just left her for another woman. The other woman is also married to a distraught Mathew Modine, who stalks Roxeanne with unclear motives. Due to the impending divorce and her sister’s fragile state, Isabel extends her visit and takes a temporary job helping an American author (Glenn Close) edit her memoirs. She immediately starts an inconsequential affair with the author’s cute and scruffy assistant (actually, who the hell was he?), and inexplicably, finds herself compelled to also start shagging Charles-Henri’s much older uncle, Edgar. So basically, Isabel sluts it up around Paris while her sister’s life disintegrates. And herein lies my Gripe Number 1: where is the relationship between the sisters? I felt somehow their experiences should be parallel or feeding off each other (or that they would talk to each other once in a while)—but the affair with the older man and the divorce debacle seem totally unrelated. I couldn’t find the connection and felt torn between two stories. Was this Isabel’s movie, or Roxeanne’s? Anyway, during said slutting and disintegrating, some mystery person or force causes Charles-Henri’s family to covet a painting of Saint Ursula, a Walker family heirloom which Roxeanne had kept temporarily at the Paris apartment with permission from her parents and siblings, all joint owners. Here we come to Gripe Number 2: Who was the prime mover behind this low thievery? Was it Charles-Henri? His snobbish mother? His sister and her sneaky husband? All of them? It’s never clear. And now I’d like to introduce you to Gripe Number 3: From the film's official site: The humor of Le Divorce arises out of the cultural mayhem that seems to naturally result when Americans encounter French – and vice versa. The foul ups and faux pas of conversation – the grave fashion errors, the malentendus (misunderstandings) of romance. To this I can only say... WHA...?? Le Divorce is severely mis-hyped as a comedy of errors. The only faux pas I could spot involved the running gag of the Kelly handbag, which I will leave for the viewers to discover. What little humor there is, at least it comes at the expense of the French (ha!). Steven Fry quietly slamming the French during lunch, the snotty French mother-in-law barking about the quality of the Roquefort, the general evilness of the whole French family for trying to take possession of the painting. “Cultural mayhem” I guess just means that the French usually come off like jerks. Humorous? Barely. Mayhem it ain’t. In the end, I had more questions than answers—many more than are listed here, in fact. Why was Glenn Close there? Why was Bebe Neuwirth there? Why was Stockard Channing there? Why bring in all these great actors if you aren’t going to use them? These characters could have been hilarious, interesting, and colorful—as a good ensemble cast should be. But instead they were just there. The only exceptions to this were Steven Fry as an art expert from Christie’s and Thomas Lennon (recently of Reno 911 fame) as the deadpan American brother. Both were grossly underused. This multi-faceted story would have done better in the hands of Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’s Diary…see review of Love Actually). Despite the hit book on which it is based and the plethora of big-name stars, Le Divorce suffers from canned dialog and storyline schisms. And the prettiness factor is a double-edged sword: the twin blondes who star looked too perfect and said too little. A little voice over narration might have helped communicate their internal transformations. Their flawless costume changes certainly didn’t. |
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I had moderately high hopes for this Merchant-Ivory production with the slick and gorgeous trailer. And although it’s quite nice to watch pretty people in pretty clothes wander around Paris, I was still disappointed in the end. This movie smells like a witty ensemble success, but ends up tasting like a stale Julia Roberts flick. What’s more, it feels very much like a movie version of a book.
