Movie Review: Film explores Americans in Paris

Friday, August 22, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

If you're still eating "freedom fries" and haven't forgiven the French for refusing to help us turn Saddam Hussein into toast, have I got a movie for you.

	'LE DIVORCE' Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements and sexual content. Players: Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Leslie Caron, Glenn Close. Director: James Ivory.

"Le Divorce" begins with Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) walking out on his pregnant American-born wife, Roxeanne (Naomi Watts), just as her half-sister, Isabel (Kate Hudson), comes to visit them in Paris.

In due time, Charles-Henri admits he has met another woman, a Russian named Magda. He figures he has done nothing wrong by French standards. His aristocratic mother, Suzanne (Leslie Caron), upbraids him for bad form, but basically agrees. Meanwhile, Isabel begins an affair with an older man, Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte), who happens to be Suzanne's brother. It becomes obvious she is only the latest in a lifetime of conquests.

Divorce proceedings center on community property, most notably a painting of St. Ursula that has belonged to Roxeanne and Isabel's family for many years and thus shouldn't figure into it at all. Ah, but it might be French, says Suzanne. Ah, but it might be worth something, says Roger (Thomas Lennon), brother of the American women, who seems to think about little else.

The point is obvious by now -- making war on Iraq is hardly the only thing about which the French and Americans disagree. They are romantic, stylish, formal. We are practical, direct, casual. They view life as an art, we view it as a discipline.

They don't like it when we ride roughshod over their culture. We don't like it when they turn up their noses at us. There's enough of that in "Le Divorce" to make you want to forget that both of our flags are red, white and blue, which won't facilitate your choice of napkin colors when ordering those patriotic potatoes.

"Le Divorce" was adapted from the Diane Johnson novel by the team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. They specialize in stories of cultural collision and characters who repress their passions to satisfy the expectations of society. "Howards End" and "Remains of the Day" are among their best movies.

They're not particularly known for breezy contemporary tales, however, and "Le Divorce" shows why.

The movie is overloaded with characters, including Roxeanne and Isabel's parents (Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing), Suzanne's formidable brood, a famous American writer (Glenn Close) who was once Edgar's lover and a museum official (Bebe Neuwirth). But it seldom finds the time to turn them into real people, perhaps because it spends so much time on plot devices like the St. Ursula painting.

Worst of all is Matthew Modine as Magda's American husband, who starts stalking Isabel because Roxeanne's husband has stolen his wife. It makes about as much sense as the film's ridiculous denouement atop the Eiffel Tower.

The problem may be that Ivory, an American who has frequented Paris for half a century, treats the city as the film's main character, to some degree. He certainly highlights its beauty and character. No wonder Isabel agrees to be Edgar's mistress -- there seems to be no other reason for it except that May-December relationships (actually, Edgar's more like October) are common in Merchant-Ivory movies. We sympathize with Roxeanne's plight, but the screenplay doesn't give Watts much to do except complain.

The view from the Eiffel Tower is splendid, at least.

Isabel falls hook, line and sinker for the French mystique and, by film's end, seems more Parisian than Californian -- Hudson's radiance seems right for either place. You have to wonder how much Roxeanne and the rest of the family feel about that, after all they've been through. Of course, a French audience would no doubt complain about those boorish Americans.

Whatever happened to vive la difference?

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