Nathalie...

Nathalie was recommended to me by a good friend with good taste in movies. So, I was disappointed when I watched a well-made movie with a hollow premise.

At the heart of the plot is a middle-aged wife who finds out her husband is sleeping around (as French husbands do, as her mother observes). Yet, she is cold in bed, and, worse, employs a beautiful winsome prostitute (to whom she gives the name Nathalie) as bait, to see how her husband behaves when he plays around.

In a seemingly obsessive manner, the wife seeks Nathalie's accounts of her encounters with the unsuspecting husband. And, the more she hears, the more she is hurt, and the colder she becomes towards her husband. The accounts are sexy and provide the momentum in the movie, but, as they grow in intensity, the wife becomes more and more ridiculous as she listens and does nothing as her marriage seems to be going down the gurgler. Does she WANT to lose her husband?? Why doesn't she use the stimulus of Nathalie's accounts to regain some of her waning sexual interest? Why doesn't she respond to the attempts of her husband to woo her back?

The twist in the end saves the movie, however, and just as well. This was a puzzling movie to me, with such a great cast, but with Fanny Ardant playing a dumb wife. French movies used to portray human relationships better this!

The cast of this film includes French heavyweights Gerard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Beart and Fanny Ardant. That's like getting Tom Hanks, Gwyneth Paltrow and Joan Allen in the same movie.

I'm American but my girlfriend is French so I'm used to watching French movies. What I like about "Nathalie" versus an American equivalent like Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful" (which itself was a remake of an older French original called "La femme infidele") is that there is no gloss, no silly special effects, just real drama and natural acting.

I don't usually like Depardieu simply because he's in every other French movie that comes out here in France, but I wasn't disappointed with him in this one. He played the part to a T.

Emmanuelle Beart, who is possibly the most beautiful living French actress, brings depth to her character. She doesn't overdo the part at all and she plays it with such coolness and sophistication. The best performance though would have to be Fanny Ardant's. Hers was the most subtle. I also like the fact that she works as a gynecologist in this movie, because later on, you'll see the connection this has in the plot, which the director brilliantly ties together.

My girlfriend claims she already predicted the twist ending, but I admit I didn't see it coming. I'm not so sure it has an obvious moral but I would say that it is a great commentary on appearances, manipulation in relationships and the unspoken arrangement couples have with each other. I definitely recommend this rare mature movie.

Despite good work from the three main leads (particularly the women), this is yet another self-satisfied would-be mature study of sexual mores in modern bourgeois French society. A man (Gerard Depardieu) who admits to his wife (Fanny Ardant) of having an occasional fling, is tricked by the latter in falling for a luscious stripper (an overage but still stunning Emmanuelle Beart) posing as the fictitious titular character. The ruse seems to work, with Ardant getting the sleazy lowdown from Beart soon after her every clandestine meeting with Depardieu. But everything is not as it seems...

Starting from the far-fetched premise that a woman would go to all that trouble to win her straying husband back, why should she then still act so coldly to him in private? Actually, I was expecting Ardant to adopt Beart's tricks-of-the-trade in her nightly dealings with Depardieu and not going out and having her own little flings. Anyway, the film is too episodically structured to be anything but a series of tale-telling (in the frankest possible manner, as can be expected from the French) of illicit rendezvous and one grows impatient with the film once he realizes that it's going nowhere very slowly.

As I said, however, the acting is top-notch and Michael Nyman's score is typically arresting. Being that the film is directed by a woman, I suppose that some sort of pro-feminist statement is being made here but, personally, I was far more intrigued by the tantalizing promise (on the DVD sleeve) of watching Beart's routines as a stripper - of which there were far too few (and far too chaste to boot for my liking), alas...

I can't understand why this film got such bad reviews and why so many people seem to have a profound dislike for it. Are people really that impatient, have they been blighted by Hollywood movies to the point that they cannot appreciate something a bit more delicate? I found Nathalie tantalising, unpredictable, romantic. I identified & empathised with all the characters, and was interested throughout. Yes, it had quite a slow pace, and there was a lot of talking, but it had an interesting ending which surprised me, and it had a lot of style. It left a few things unsaid, which i like as it gives you a chance to explore the meanings of what you are seeing, almost like a self-psychoanalysis.

Ardant, Beart, & Depardieu all gave great performances. I also particularly liked the soundtrack (I normally hate movie music), and I'm not talking about Nyman's stuff, which somehow passed me by, but the gently throbbing house y, beat y, electro we would here in the club, and in the car (if my memory serves me correctly). This was the best selection of high class porno music I have ever heard, & I'm currently seeking the soundtrack as inspiration for some scenes I'm writing now.

Big-up Anne Fontaine for delivering a delicate, classy film, and big-up the writing team Philippe Blasband, Jacques Fieschi, François-Olivier Rousseau, & Fontaine for writing something intricate and involving :)

My own films are online at www.undeadarmy.org

Would a woman, finding out that her husband has been having casual affairs (which he admits to, but says `they are nothing') hire a prostitute to seduce him and report back to her? I don't know, but maybe it's possible in France, a country which prides itself on the tidy management of sex in general. It does seem a rather bizarre way of putting some zing back into a flagging marriage. Fanny Ardant as the voyeuristic wife Catherine dominates the movie though she spends a lot of time staring off into the middle distance. Gérard Depardieu as Bernard the husband is reduced to a bit player. The most intriguing character is `Nathalie' the prostitute played with innocent charm by Emmanuelle Béart, who, though 38, manages to look 15 years younger. She might have a waif-like manner but she certainly has learned what men are like and what they want, and her accounts of her sessions with the husband seem all too authentic.

Unfortunately I worked out fairly early in the piece what was really going on. I won't spoil it for you dear reader, but it is all a bit anti-climactic. The film does have a genuine Parisian feel to it – crowded apartments (even that of the affluent married couple), bars, streets, restaurants, etc. All that elegant consumption and all that personal lack of fulfillment. It's almost a relief to discover that one of the patients at Catherine's gynaecology practice, though in her early 20s, is still a virgin.

In its favour, the movie does not drag on too long, and has in `Natalie' a genuinely intriguing character. She is not the usual desperate junkie - she is not without resources, and when not being a prostitute works as a hairdresser and beautician. Is she able to have a `normal' relationship with anyone? At one stage the temperature between her and Catherine gets quite warm. Or is she emotionally burnt out by the rigours of the game? Anne Fontaine as director doesn't seem to want to explore her most interesting character so we are left to guess.