Gabrielle [2005] [DVD]

"Gabrielle" is an intense and emotional story based on Joseph Conrad's lesser known novel "The Return". This period French language drama tells the tale of a marital crisis in the household of a respectable ,successful but unemotional French businessman. He returns home from work one day to find a letter from his wife saying that she has left him for another man.However shortly after he reads this letter, she returns back home, apparently having changed her mind. The rest of the film is devoted to discussions and arguments between the flabbergasted and distraught cuckolded husband ,who now believes that his wife is a stranger ,and his saddened, distant and unrepentant spouse. "Gabrielle" is a well acted and impressive film that dissects the nature of relationships and marriage very well.

Directed by Patrice Chéreau's this dreamlike interpretation of Joseph Conrad's short story The Return, starring the lovely Isabelle Huppert, certainly isn't the type of period movie that you take your mother to. In this claustrophobic and rather subversive film, her abusive husband damages an aristocratic woman until she is almost stripped dramatically naked.

The film is set in Paris in 1912 and the upper-class couple is Jean and Gabrielle Hervey (played by Huppert and Pascal Greggory). They live a life of exclusivity, holding lavish dinner parties in a brocaded world of seemingly impeccable comfort. But after ten years their charmed life is bereft of any kind of intimacy, even though Jean boasts that neither are in need of closeness.

No longer sexual with each other, and sleeping in twin beds, the arrogant Jean treats his wife like an object, intent to flatter her for her impeccable style. Gabrielle, who has resigned herself to an eventually loveless marriage, has now made gestures toward freedom. She's been having a secret affair with a man whom Jean detests and as the movie opens, has left her husband for him.

Mysteriously though, Gabrielle tries to reverse her decision and returns home, just as Jean finds her confession. Of course, he is shattered, just like the wine glass that he drops as he reads the letter, for he cannot believe that she would do such a thing. They both argue and bicker, with Gabrielle standing by her decision and forced to enter into a type of confessional about why she left in the first place.

Most of the story focuses on both characters' individual need to connect as they try to dissect their marriage and their reasons for being together. At first, Jean is very concerned about impropriety and what others might think, but then he is confounded that his wife no longer loves him, whilst Gabrielle is devastated at Jean's apparent pomposity and his inability to understand her needs.

So why does Gabrielle come back? It's never really made that clear; she says that she just could not go through with it, but as Chéreau slowly draws out the true identities from under the characters' respective corset and dinner jacket, we get to see a battle of the sexes take place, where both of these damaged and bitter people fight for dominance.

The film is stagey and talky and might be a bit much for some viewers, and both the main protagonists aren't that likable as they bicker on stairways and over dinner as the maids surreptitiously circle around them, feeding them dinner, and furtively listening whilst also trying to remain discreet.

Huppert is ravishing as Gabrielle and she has the more difficult role of trying to assert her dominance over her husband who is very typical of the patriarchal society of the time. Whilst Greggory's Jean starts out as over confident and self important, oozing a kind of upper-class snobbery and artificial contentment, it is Gabrielle who ends up the stronger of the two as she gradually lays herself emotionally bare.

Eric Gautier's swirling cinematography does a great job of complimenting the story, as his camera persistently spins around these characters who seem to be trapped in this claustrophobic and moribund world - indeed the house itself looks like an expensive and grand mausoleum.

Gabrielle is a woman who was obviously a product of her time and the fact that she speaks out as she does is quite unique. But the film also serves as a quite startling look at the dark side of one couple, as their marriage, now devoid of all the social expectations surrounding it, slowly and irrevocably disintegrates. Mike Leonard December 06.

a rich and succesful business man has been married for ten years to an intelligent and pretty wife, but beneath the glittering surface sexual interest has waned.
Suddenly she leaves a note to say that she has fallen in love and left him, but she returns a few hours later. He is bewildered, angry and distraught. His probing fails to explain why she has left him and, still more, why she has come back. After an attempted rape and his inability to respond to her sexual invitation, he storms out on her never to return. The story is set in the nineteenth century world of servants and lavish dinner parties, but there are really only two characters in the film. The others are observers rather than participants. Chereau introduces variety by alternating black and white with colour photography and background music with silence, but the rationale is not always obvious.