Le Divorce

Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson

James Ivory's Le Divorce, from 2003, is a watchable comedy of manners set in France that features Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson playing sisters. The film is an adaptation, by Ivory and lifelong collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, of Diane Johnson's wry novel. Much of the wit of the film emanates from the book. However, Ivory, a languid filmmaker for good and ill, lacks that crackle of electricity that can set a comedy ablaze. The visuals are dull and the movement of the actors largely undynamic or, in the rare cases where something dynamic occurs, clumsy. The scenes that offer visual delight are montages of bourgeoise consumerist fantasy: fresh produce, scarves, negligees, and gastronomical pornography.

Hudson plays Isabel, a feckless twenty something visiting her pregnant sister Roxie (Ms. Watts) in Paris. Roxie is a poet with a six year old daughter by her husband Charles-Henri ( a vapid Melvil Poupaud) and is halfway to term on another pregnancy. However, her husband has unceremoniously ditched her for another woman named Magda. This precipitates the divorce of the titles, the negotiations of which are long and contain some rancor. The parents of Roxie and Isabel, played by Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing, arrive to provide moral support, but there is something else at stake. A painting in Roxie and Charles-Henri's apartment turns out to possibly be a Georges de La Tour which could mean that it is worth millions. Charles-Henri's family, headed by his mother (Leslie Caron), are eager to get their fingers on that pie. To further complicate matters, Isabel has an affair with a married older man, Roxie's brother-in-law.

As you can probably tell, there is already too much material for a two hour film. A subplot with Mathew Modine as Magda's estranged husband who is stalking Roxie for some reason strikes the falsest note, but was too central to Johnson's novel to excise. Modine is left flailing trying to flesh out an undeveloped character, a fate shared by many talented performers on this project; particularly Bebe Neuwirth, Stephen Fry, Thomas Lennon, and Ms. Caron. Ivory and Jhabvala shift one of the climaxes from Euro Disney to the Eiffel Tower. A move done presumably for budgetary reasons, but one that eliminates from the film a golden opportunity to satirize the clash of Franco and American cultures. I also hated the casting of Thierry Lhermitte as Edgar, Isabel's lover. Lhermitte is a handsome dude and a fine comic actor, but is twenty years too young to play the part and, consequently, lacks the gravitas for the role. In the book, Edgar is a septuagenarian who gives Isabel a sentimental and intellectual education: aged Europe tutoring young and innocent American. This Jamesian motif is surely part of what attracted Ivory to this book, but it barely registers in the film. The sum of Edgar's wisdom is reduced to a Emerson quote.

Glenn Close and Kate Hudson

I did enjoy Glenn Close's portrayal of a literary lioness who employs Isabel as a gopher. Close's performance is the only one to capture the erudite bitchery of the novel. Hudson is fine as a relative innocent. I feel Hollywood has under used her by casting her in rote romcoms over and over again. Watts, an outstanding thespian, is at sea here and never believably pregnant. Her poetry reading in the film is remarkably listless, a description I would also apply to the film's depiction of eros. Ivory has always been more effective in portraying repression than sexuality, which I trace to his upbringing in isolated Klamath Falls, Oregon. He does nail the craven materialism of both French and Americans while juxtaposing American openness with French diplomacy. Ivory always seems more at home with the traditional virtues of quality literature than the funk and punk of the 20th century, much less the newest one. Still, his plodding virtues are to be extolled in an era of cinema of unparalleled mindlessness.