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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Le Divorce Le Divorce is a movie that attempts to explain the differences between Americans and the French. It stars Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts as American sisters living in Paris. Roxy (Watts) is a mother of one with another on the way; but as the movie opens, her husband mysteriously leaves her. Fortunately, Isabel (Hudson) has just arrived to help with the pregnancy. But in a peculiarly French twist that I won't try to explain, Isabel starts having an affair with a much older French gentleman, who just so happens to be the uncle of Roxy's soon-to-be ex-husband. This of course raises some awkward moments, especially when Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte) gives Isabel a beautiful purse known as a Kelly bag. Turns out that he's given this kind of bag before, so his sister and all of his previous mistresses recognize it. Including Olivia Pace, an American novelist played by Glenn Close, who just so happens to be Isabel's employer. While these various plot threads would be enough to satisfy most movies, Le Divorce decides to add in the arrival of Roxy and Isabel's family from Santa Barbara, a potentially famous painting that the families can fight over and, most bizarre of all, Matthew Modine as a deranged cuckold who decides to brandish his gun at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) has one of the prettiest smiles in movies, and one of these days she's going to find another film that lets her show off her charm. But Le Divorce isn't it, despite how many smiling reaction shots Hudson is forced to flash. The rest of the cast is fine, especially Lhermitte and Leslie Caron as his sister. But James Ivory can't decide whether he's directing a breezy French romance, an examination of the differences between American and French views of infidelity, or an analysis of the fine art market. And when the gun gets pulled out in one of the strangest hostage scenes ever filmed, well I threw my hands up in disgust. Le Divorce has its pleasures but not enough to hold us together. J. Robert Parks 8/7/2003
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