Metacritic reviews

You can't imagine a soapier setup, but Gilles' Wife taken on its own terms is a spectacular achievement, a heartbreaking cinematic work that finely balances melodrama, family love story and devastating tragedy.

Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.

Devos's performance is an expert workshop of internalized emotions and silent forbearance.

Cornillac is excellent as the emotionally immature Gilles, but this is Devos' show.

The ending is a stunner. Like those '30 classics it suggests, Gilles' Wife seduces us with true cinematic magic: rich characters, great acting and that rapturous old French blend of realism and theatricality.

While the outcome is never really in doubt, director Frederic Fonteyne illuminates the wife's inner world with a rich sense of atmosphere, and Emmanuelle Devos' riveting performance manages to convey every shift in her character's suppressed emotional life with the subtlest of gestures and expressions.

An impeccable minimalist drama that's tailored specifically to Devos' expressive capabilities, which say more than the sparse dialogue.

Fonteyne doesn't have much use for words. He prefers to tell his story via facial expressions and body language, much as filmmakers did in the silent era.

This is a lyrical art movie with admittedly limited commercial appeal, but worth seeing for cinematic explorers.

Has an appealing surface beauty, largely due to the talented cinematographer Virginie Saint Martin, and an equally shallow mystery.