Gabrielle

This up close study of a marriage in crisis is Chereau at his subtle, rich best. The infant terrible of '82 Bayreuth has matured into a maestro of cinema.

Gabrielle wants more but is unwilling to spend the effort or pay the price to get it. Her husband wants less and will settle for nothing less than less. The machinery of their marriage was running so flawlessly that it required no work by either and only modest attention. Their relations were on automatic pilot and they both seemed massively content to keep it that way. Then the machinery, briefly but ruinously, goes crazy.

Huppert and Greggory are riveting. And, not counting the credits, run time is less than 90 minutes. Good artistic judgment there by Chereau. Any longer and this film could be painful for the viewer. Jim Smith

Patrice Chéreau and his team continue to amaze. Their recent movies--"Intimacy" and "Son frère"--have been wild, and Isabelle Huppert has played some wild roles too. But "Gabrielle" is a masterpiece of control, an equal of the studio movies of Fritz Lang in the 1940s. A benchmark is Hitchcock's "Rebecca." Like those movies, every shot here, each turn of the head, is a statement of emotion (and a test of the actors' skill). Now not only music tells what the characters are doing, light is further nuanced with color. The almost-homage to black-and-white is astonishing, because it can also be lit into color, showing the characters' being forced to be here and now without escaping to old assumptions: a bitten lip bleeds red, a serving woman elaborately brings a softly glowing lamp upstairs. (A friend objects that the house has electricity, but the same friend puts candles on the dinner table, and this lamp has a purpose.) There's a thesis in Film Studies for the communicative devices of each scene and what is referenced, like the way there is a less flamboyant version of scenes in Ruiz's "Le temps retrouvé." But then being restrained is the theme, and the tension is extreme without any thunderstorm or overt thrill (a thrill for these characters might be the horror). If the source story was Conrad's homage to Henry James, here is a movie worthy of their capacity for narrative of the highest watchfulness and precision. Stay totally alert, movie goers.

I've been watching & thoroughly enjoying Isabelle Huppert's films since 'The Lacemaker'. This time, what struck me was the intensity of Huppert's next-to-passive, almost casually indifferent postures of contempt for her husband. It is because of her being so minimal and apathetic that her performance harnesses its power and devastation. And this is what enhances Greggory's reactive performance as being so complementary, that of a once smug now tortured soul who slips and struggles to re-grasp a heart turned cold. He's just left grabbing air in the end. The looks on the faces of the chorus, their social clique & the servants in the troubled Hervey household says it all.

Going in, I was reminded of another story of martial discord, David Hughes Jone's 'Betrayal' but 'Gabrielle' hit me as being more incisive and oppressive than anything I've seen adapted for Pinter. I don't need to state the obvious that parlor films of this variety appeal only to those with an acquired taste. As for me, I can only say that I prefer the ice cubes that go with my scotch jagged & stinging cold like the ingredients in this film.

French language period set chick flick that was so banally turgid and pretentious that I wanted to scratch thine own eyes out in those brief lucid periods I was awake. One thing I did share with what I expect the females in the audience were experiencing was the shedding of tears, the stark difference being that mine were tears of blood. If it had been a play I would have rushed out, brought a gun, then rushed back to shoot the actors on stage for in my opinion they deserve nothing but death. Put briefly, in turn of the century Paris a rather arrogant man rather abruptly finds out that his wife of 10 years desires to leave him for another man. Much talking is done. Then much more talking is done. This is followed by lengthy periods of talking. More talking. Then wrapped up with, surprisingly, talking. But it's all done in an almost monologue method , briefly interspersed with large titles on screen which I expect the makers of the movie thought to be profound yet I found completely ridiculous (the film ends with the words "AND HE NEVER RETURNED!". I thought it rude of me to puke on the floor of so gorgeous a theatre (the State in Sydney, such a beautiful and elaborate place) so I resisted with all my might). I left the cinema with a headache. Not in any way due to the complexity and depth of the story I'd just seen, but because I just wasted what I now consider to be the most valuable 90 minutes of my life ever. Even now I want to cry.

I see a great number of art-house films, so I'm not a pop culture heathen and I own many great titles in my own private DVD collection that I watch and treasure. I have nothing against glacial pacing, indeed for many wonderful films it is often delicious to slowly savour the unfolding occurrences (In My Fathers Den, Lantana, Insomnia, Mar Adentro etc) and my own favorites are indie films like Requiem For A Dream and Mysterious Skin (tho honestly a film one need watch only once due to its power and disturbing subject matter). But in this instance I would never have thought a "French language art-house drama" would be the type of film that in my opinion, gives the Adam Sandler film The Waterboy a run for it's money.

Complete dross.

Obviously we don't all like the same things. One commentator said it was all just talk, as if that were a bad thing. I happen to love language and words, and in particular love the French language. So that is the reason I rent a movie in French. I also have a very strong aversion to "action movies" where language is reduced to "Ow! Help! Duck!" On the other hand, movies like Gabrielle where minute movements of the psyche are explored in depth by minimalistic means, these are what grip me, move me, keep me interested. I do not really think the movie is like an opera -- it was more like a french play -- the delivery and velocity of the spoken word was very much in the style of french live theater.

My only caveat is that French-ness and Conrad seem a strange mix to me. There was another French movie that was made on a Conrad text, and I had a similar reaction. Conrad is not writing about French society. And yet the action has been transplanted to France. And it seems an entirely incongruous transplant to me -- plopping the joyless uprightness of puritanical England (the only place name mentioned is "West End Station" into a such a lively Latin culture which has always had a much more relaxed attitude towards love and sex... well,to me it's just incongruous.

Nevertheless, it was an cleverly crafted movie, and the musical score by Fabio Vacchi was unearthly beautiful.