Screened
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Anne Fontaine's "Nathalie ..". is an unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.
In fact, it's barely a triangle at all: The two female stars dominate as the film devolves into a weird friendship between a bourgeois gynecologist and wife played by Fanny Ardant and a beautician and prostitute played by Emmanuelle Beart. Gerard Depardieu, playing Ardant's philandering husband, is left to mope about the edges of the story, more a third wheel than a third side.
An eagerly anticipated world premiere coming into the festival thanks to that cast and the promise of hot, sexy doings, "Nathalie ..". is a disappointment -- shallow in its psychology and verging on silliness in its approach to sexual matters. The film will undoubtedly perform well in French-speaking territories, but a North American distributor will really have to hype the cast and the (mostly verbal) kinkiness.
The film gets to the point quickly. Bernard (Depardieu), husband to Catherine (Ardant) for 25 years, misses a surprise birthday party and in so doing inadvertently reveals his predilection for marital disloyalty. Shaken, Catherine plots an unusual course of action. She visits a local brothel and hires Marlene (Beart) to become her husband's next mistress.
As Nathalie, Marlene will meet and seduce Bernard, then relate the details of her husband's sexual behavior to Catherine. This way, Catherine Will not only control Bernard's extracurricular love life but also glean knowledge about the man she obviously doesn't know as well as she should.
In their frequent debriefing sessions, which grow increasingly more lurid, an odd friendship develops between the two women. Soon, Marlene is doing Catherine's mother's hair, and Catherine is paying for Marlene's apartment.
Fontaine, who directs and co-wrote the script, pushes things into implausible psychological realms, but unless she did so, she would have little story to tell. As it is, the situation grows static with endless meetings in the same hotel bars, brothel and bistros. These meetings cause Catherine To grow more distant from Bernard and closer to Marlene/Nathalie, a homoerotic possibility the movie flirts with but never really investigates. A twist ending is easily spotted and arrives with little impact.
Ardant is touching at times as an icy physician who as a young woman was "a good lay" but has come to take her life and husband for granted. Beart gives her character plenty of sexual energy, but she is never more than a hooker with a cash register for a heart. Depardieu mostly looks tired and bewildered, which suits his character but does make him a dull subject for two such glamorous women to be getting excited over.
Fontaine's Paris is one of crowded restaurants, sad hotel rooms and a hostess bar bathed in red light, all given an erotic though strangely melancholy sheen by Jean-Marc Fabre's elegant cinematography and Michael Nyman's terrific, moody score.
Essentially, "Nathalie ..". is an endless come-on with little payoff, a dry hustle where people talk graphically about sex but everyone except the prostitute seems too exhausted or frigid to perform.
NATHALIE ...
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Anne Fontaine
Screenwriters: Anne Fontaine, Jacques Fieschi
Based on an original work by: Philippe Blasband
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Executive producer: Alain Sarde
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michel Barthelemy
Music: Michael Nyman
Editor: Emmanuelle Castro
Cast:
Catherine: Fanny Ardant
Marlene/Nathalie: Emmanuelle Beart
Bernard: Gerard Depardieu
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Anne Fontaine's "Nathalie ..". is an unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.
In fact, it's barely a triangle at all: The two female stars dominate as the film devolves into a weird friendship between a bourgeois gynecologist and wife played by Fanny Ardant and a beautician and prostitute played by Emmanuelle Beart. Gerard Depardieu, playing Ardant's philandering husband, is left to mope about the edges of the story, more a third wheel than a third side.
An eagerly anticipated world premiere coming into the festival thanks to that cast and the promise of hot, sexy doings, "Nathalie ..". is a disappointment -- shallow in its psychology and verging on silliness in its approach to sexual matters. The film will undoubtedly perform well in French-speaking territories, but a North American distributor will really have to hype the cast and the (mostly verbal) kinkiness.
The film gets to the point quickly. Bernard (Depardieu), husband to Catherine (Ardant) for 25 years, misses a surprise birthday party and in so doing inadvertently reveals his predilection for marital disloyalty. Shaken, Catherine plots an unusual course of action. She visits a local brothel and hires Marlene (Beart) to become her husband's next mistress.
As Nathalie, Marlene will meet and seduce Bernard, then relate the details of her husband's sexual behavior to Catherine. This way, Catherine Will not only control Bernard's extracurricular love life but also glean knowledge about the man she obviously doesn't know as well as she should.
In their frequent debriefing sessions, which grow increasingly more lurid, an odd friendship develops between the two women. Soon, Marlene is doing Catherine's mother's hair, and Catherine is paying for Marlene's apartment.
Fontaine, who directs and co-wrote the script, pushes things into implausible psychological realms, but unless she did so, she would have little story to tell. As it is, the situation grows static with endless meetings in the same hotel bars, brothel and bistros. These meetings cause Catherine To grow more distant from Bernard and closer to Marlene/Nathalie, a homoerotic possibility the movie flirts with but never really investigates. A twist ending is easily spotted and arrives with little impact.
Ardant is touching at times as an icy physician who as a young woman was "a good lay" but has come to take her life and husband for granted. Beart gives her character plenty of sexual energy, but she is never more than a hooker with a cash register for a heart. Depardieu mostly looks tired and bewildered, which suits his character but does make him a dull subject for two such glamorous women to be getting excited over.
Fontaine's Paris is one of crowded restaurants, sad hotel rooms and a hostess bar bathed in red light, all given an erotic though strangely melancholy sheen by Jean-Marc Fabre's elegant cinematography and Michael Nyman's terrific, moody score.
Essentially, "Nathalie ..". is an endless come-on with little payoff, a dry hustle where people talk graphically about sex but everyone except the prostitute seems too exhausted or frigid to perform.
NATHALIE ...
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Anne Fontaine
Screenwriters: Anne Fontaine, Jacques Fieschi
Based on an original work by: Philippe Blasband
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Executive producer: Alain Sarde
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michel Barthelemy
Music: Michael Nyman
Editor: Emmanuelle Castro
Cast:
Catherine: Fanny Ardant
Marlene/Nathalie: Emmanuelle Beart
Bernard: Gerard Depardieu
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Screened
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Anne Fontaine's "Nathalie ..". is an unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.
In fact, it's barely a triangle at all: The two female stars dominate as the film devolves into a weird friendship between a bourgeois gynecologist and wife played by Fanny Ardant and a beautician and prostitute played by Emmanuelle Beart. Gerard Depardieu, playing Ardant's philandering husband, is left to mope about the edges of the story, more a third wheel than a third side.
An eagerly anticipated world premiere coming into the festival thanks to that cast and the promise of hot, sexy doings, "Nathalie ..". is a disappointment -- shallow in its psychology and verging on silliness in its approach to sexual matters. The film will undoubtedly perform well in French-speaking territories, but a North American distributor will really have to hype the cast and the (mostly verbal) kinkiness.
The film gets to the point quickly. Bernard (Depardieu), husband to Catherine (Ardant) for 25 years, misses a surprise birthday party and in so doing inadvertently reveals his predilection for marital disloyalty. Shaken, Catherine plots an unusual course of action. She visits a local brothel and hires Marlene (Beart) to become her husband's next mistress.
As Nathalie, Marlene will meet and seduce Bernard, then relate the details of her husband's sexual behavior to Catherine. This way, Catherine Will not only control Bernard's extracurricular love life but also glean knowledge about the man she obviously doesn't know as well as she should.
In their frequent debriefing sessions, which grow increasingly more lurid, an odd friendship develops between the two women. Soon, Marlene is doing Catherine's mother's hair, and Catherine is paying for Marlene's apartment.
Fontaine, who directs and co-wrote the script, pushes things into implausible psychological realms, but unless she did so, she would have little story to tell. As it is, the situation grows static with endless meetings in the same hotel bars, brothel and bistros. These meetings cause Catherine To grow more distant from Bernard and closer to Marlene/Nathalie, a homoerotic possibility the movie flirts with but never really investigates. A twist ending is easily spotted and arrives with little impact.
Ardant is touching at times as an icy physician who as a young woman was "a good lay" but has come to take her life and husband for granted. Beart gives her character plenty of sexual energy, but she is never more than a hooker with a cash register for a heart. Depardieu mostly looks tired and bewildered, which suits his character but does make him a dull subject for two such glamorous women to be getting excited over.
Fontaine's Paris is one of crowded restaurants, sad hotel rooms and a hostess bar bathed in red light, all given an erotic though strangely melancholy sheen by Jean-Marc Fabre's elegant cinematography and Michael Nyman's terrific, moody score.
Essentially, "Nathalie ..". is an endless come-on with little payoff, a dry hustle where people talk graphically about sex but everyone except the prostitute seems too exhausted or frigid to perform.
NATHALIE ...
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Anne Fontaine
Screenwriters: Anne Fontaine, Jacques Fieschi
Based on an original work by: Philippe Blasband
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Executive producer: Alain Sarde
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michel Barthelemy
Music: Michael Nyman
Editor: Emmanuelle Castro
Cast:
Catherine: Fanny Ardant
Marlene/Nathalie: Emmanuelle Beart
Bernard: Gerard Depardieu
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Anne Fontaine's "Nathalie ..". is an unconvincing psychosexual drama that tries to reconfigure the classic romantic triangle but winds up looking like a preposterous pretzel.
In fact, it's barely a triangle at all: The two female stars dominate as the film devolves into a weird friendship between a bourgeois gynecologist and wife played by Fanny Ardant and a beautician and prostitute played by Emmanuelle Beart. Gerard Depardieu, playing Ardant's philandering husband, is left to mope about the edges of the story, more a third wheel than a third side.
An eagerly anticipated world premiere coming into the festival thanks to that cast and the promise of hot, sexy doings, "Nathalie ..". is a disappointment -- shallow in its psychology and verging on silliness in its approach to sexual matters. The film will undoubtedly perform well in French-speaking territories, but a North American distributor will really have to hype the cast and the (mostly verbal) kinkiness.
The film gets to the point quickly. Bernard (Depardieu), husband to Catherine (Ardant) for 25 years, misses a surprise birthday party and in so doing inadvertently reveals his predilection for marital disloyalty. Shaken, Catherine plots an unusual course of action. She visits a local brothel and hires Marlene (Beart) to become her husband's next mistress.
As Nathalie, Marlene will meet and seduce Bernard, then relate the details of her husband's sexual behavior to Catherine. This way, Catherine Will not only control Bernard's extracurricular love life but also glean knowledge about the man she obviously doesn't know as well as she should.
In their frequent debriefing sessions, which grow increasingly more lurid, an odd friendship develops between the two women. Soon, Marlene is doing Catherine's mother's hair, and Catherine is paying for Marlene's apartment.
Fontaine, who directs and co-wrote the script, pushes things into implausible psychological realms, but unless she did so, she would have little story to tell. As it is, the situation grows static with endless meetings in the same hotel bars, brothel and bistros. These meetings cause Catherine To grow more distant from Bernard and closer to Marlene/Nathalie, a homoerotic possibility the movie flirts with but never really investigates. A twist ending is easily spotted and arrives with little impact.
Ardant is touching at times as an icy physician who as a young woman was "a good lay" but has come to take her life and husband for granted. Beart gives her character plenty of sexual energy, but she is never more than a hooker with a cash register for a heart. Depardieu mostly looks tired and bewildered, which suits his character but does make him a dull subject for two such glamorous women to be getting excited over.
Fontaine's Paris is one of crowded restaurants, sad hotel rooms and a hostess bar bathed in red light, all given an erotic though strangely melancholy sheen by Jean-Marc Fabre's elegant cinematography and Michael Nyman's terrific, moody score.
Essentially, "Nathalie ..". is an endless come-on with little payoff, a dry hustle where people talk graphically about sex but everyone except the prostitute seems too exhausted or frigid to perform.
NATHALIE ...
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Anne Fontaine
Screenwriters: Anne Fontaine, Jacques Fieschi
Based on an original work by: Philippe Blasband
Producer: Christine Gozlan
Executive producer: Alain Sarde
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Fabre
Production designer: Michel Barthelemy
Music: Michael Nyman
Editor: Emmanuelle Castro
Cast:
Catherine: Fanny Ardant
Marlene/Nathalie: Emmanuelle Beart
Bernard: Gerard Depardieu
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/23/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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