Le Divorce Movie Review:

Based off of Diane Johnson’s 1997 novel, Le Divorce is a melodrama at odds with French and American cultures. Under the direction of the talented James Ivory, the story’s characters keep the film afloat, but then are sunken by the film’s climaxing fiasco.

The story opens with a young American, Isabel (Kate Hudson), from Santa Barbara, California arriving in Paris to see her sister, Roxy (The Ring’s Naomi Watts). As Isabel arrives, Roxy’s French husband, Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud), is leaving her for another woman. The poet Roxy is left along with her daughter and pregnant with another baby on the way. Roxy is then seen as a stubborn American for not signing divorce papers with her husband, which leads to a subplot of her American family and his French family in a scuffle to claim
a valuable painting owned by the once happily married couple. Isabel on the other hand gets a job editing for a American author (Glenn Close) and begins an affair with a much older French politician named Edgar Cosset (Thierry Lhermitte), who is also Roxy’s husband’s uncle. These are just a few of the many incidents the characters of this cultural clashing film inhabit.

Le Divorce is a very busy film with a lot of characters in a lot of melodrama. The film is being billed as a comedy, there are a few chuckles, but
this is a film that you are more likely to see on the Lifetime channel than on Comedy Central.

The strength of the film is writer/director James Ivory’s balance between the clashing American and French lifestyles. There are some great examples
of the supposed or "stereotypical" differences between the cultures, such as the French and American differences in money, love, presentation, and of course matters of divorce. One of the best lines is at the end of the film when a couple of French police officers state the typical notion that, "Americans just kill for money or drugs." In parallel reference, Isabel’s other French boyfriend feels culturally threatened by The Simpsons. The characters in the film are straight-forward, believable, and the film moves at a natural speed.
However, some characters pop in and out of the story and the one character of Tellman (Matthew Modine), who is the husband to mistress of Roxy’s husband, just becomes annoying. There are some nice moments of simile, but the over the top
ending at the Eiffel Tower just pushes the film overboard. It almost seems that the stupid ending just came out of nowhere and then many of the questions that you thought would be answered are not.

Kate Hudson shines in her sparkly role as the free-spirited Isabel. The gifted Naomi Watts mostly stays emotional the whole film as the abandon Roxy, but she still calls for notoriety. As the all too good to be true womanizing politician Edgar Cosset, Thierry Lhermitte is so charming that it seems everything he says is right. It is also pleasant to see the wonderful Glenn Close
back in a good role as the knowledgeable writer Oliva Pace. Matthew Modine is the only really lost performance in the film as the crazed husband Tellman. Modine overdoes the role in the film’s most intolerable moments.

Le Divorce works well on the heels of showing diversity, cultural conflict, and cultural communication among American and French people. The clash of cultures is the stronghold of the film that is portrayed well by director
James Ivory. However, the dunce ending brings the film down and everything that one expects to see in a soap opera is in this supposed comedy, which stirs up hardly any laughs.

Grade: C+

08/08/03
By Joseph C. Tucker

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Le Divorce and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.