Sorry, this movie sucks

Good concept, poorly executed.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Roxeanne/Roxy (Naomi Watts) is an American in Paris. Pregnant, she is abandoned by her husband who decides he prefers his mistress, and the story unfolds as her family gets involved. Her sister Isabel (Kate Hudson) flies over to help her, the rest of her family hear about if from afar, and the husband's French side of the family try to deal with his mistakes and discuss how they can come out of the divorce on top, whilst avoiding the unspeakable subject of the affair.The tag-line for Le Divorce is "A comedy of manners...both good and bad." Unfortunately, Le Divorce isn't a comedy. It's a problem riddled drama that mishandles the big issues, has little respect for its characters and is far, far too long. It kicks off with a perfectly OK beginning, introducing us to some unlikeable people saying unlikeable things. Roxeanne's parents care more for a painting than the happiness of one of their daughters - "our girls are thousands of miles away from and they should be home with us. That's the essentials," one of them says, before the conversation swiftly returns to an expensive painting she has in her Paris home. The Americans in Le Divorce equally appear to be commodities to be retrieved from the French - Watts's character seems abandoned by those who should care for her beyond using her as a pawn to gain the upper hand.After finding out about his affair, Roxy rightly detests her husband, does not want to see him, even spend time in the same room as him, yet will not consider a divorce. It's almost as if the writer wants to continue to punish the character. She must be chastised for her American ideals in Paris, and indeed she does not get off lightly.The sister, now in Paris consoling her sister, then sees the husband kissing another woman in a bar, and her reaction is to smile and then chat with him amiably whilst he rationalises his affair in a stereotypical French way - "she should understand. She is a poet." Meanwhile, Roxy is pregnant and alone. It's impossible to tell what message the film is trying to get across - that all French men follow their heart at the expense of duty and honour? That a charming accent justifies all actions. Perhaps. The actions of Isabel, however, are impossible to justify and the film doesn't even try.First she decides to pursue the French uncle - why? A flirty line on liking "red meat," followed by a strange sideways transition in the editing and 3 minutes later she becomes his mistress, simultaneously continuing on a flirtatious courtship with a young Frenchman she slept with within a day or two of arrival. Meanwhile, as we know, Roxy is still pregnant and alone. The film is inherently shallow, glorying in its consumerism and appearances - opera, poetry recital, expensive paintings, designer handbags, lingerie, fine dining. The lack of confrontation is infuriating, revelations are merely glossed over, and nobody appears to say anything that an actual person would say dealing with these issues. The worst example of this is Roxy's failed suicide attempt, which is expertly glossed over. Isabel tells the family not to mention it, they don't, and Roxy, lying in a hospital bed with bandages on her wrist tells her husband that she blames herself for her decision making. Quick, move on, we have a great little scene with Stephen Fry as a Christie's buyer to get to! And off we go.The change of pace and time is also difficult to follow or justify. Whilst at the start, the film seems to be taking one day at a time, it begins to jump several days, perhaps weeks, between scenes without any visuals clues that we've moved forward. Occasionally an increasingly more pregnant Roxy is shown side on so we're aware of some time passing, but generally it's a mess. Things occasionally pick up with the few scenes afforded to Matthew Modine's character. He's the husband of the mistress of the husband of Roxeanne, who seems unstable enough to spark some life into the entire film. Sadly, as in the scene in the bookshop, he is quickly ushered out of the frame again, only to return for an improbably contrived finale with a gun on the Eiffel Tower.Yes, the weird ending - from drama to Hitchcockian suspense to a whimsical voice-over conclusion as the handbag, containing the gun, floats on the wind over Paris. It all feels a bit Sex and the City hearing Kate Hudson sum everything up into a neat little package. A horrible, superficial, meaningless package. And I hated it.

There's a definite 'curate's egg' feel about this one, not surprising given the melange of French, American and - to a lesser extent - English acting styles tossed in the blender then pressing the button marked 'hope' rather than the one marked 'perhaps not such a good idea'. The plot, such as it is, is kick-started when Melvil Poupaud, scion of an old French family, calls time on his marriage to Naomi Watts, who has (presumably) severed her American ties to live with him - and bear his children - in Paris. To lend support to her sibling, now pregnant again, Kate Hudson planes in from the US and is soon having sex with an arrogant kid, Romain Duris, and an older (55) sophisticated smoothie, Thierry Thermitte who, together with Watts, turns in the best performance in the film. There are other strands, not least the disputed ownership of a painting which Watts imported from her American 'family' home to France, plus parents in the respective shapes of Leslie Caron, Stockard Channing and Sam Waterson. it's all very light but just misses sufficient charm to raise a soufflé.

I keep trying to figure out why this movie is rated so low. I thought it was very good, and that was before I started reading the book -- well more than halfway through, I think it's a faithful adaptation that delivers the storyline and the theme of the novel very well. I tend now to read the novel a movie is based on after I've seen the film, since my experience has taught me that doing the reverse always leads to disappointment in the movie. This was not an error with this title. I think all the casting, all the acting, and especially the direction, were well done.It seems to me that somehow viewers were expecting too much from the movie. My philosophy is that expectations are arranged disappointments, and I try not to expect anything going in. I do admit that I had some doubts when it seemed that Merchant-Ivory were doing what looked like a light comedy, but there is much more to the book and film than that, first of all, and secondly, why should accomplished filmmakers not move around the genres? Look at Kubrick and The Archers, just to name two, who did so and did it successfully. I wonder how many people went in expecting "Howards End" and thus were disappointed, not in the film but by their own expectations. It's not fair to the filmmakers. Expecting "Le Divorce" to be on par with "Howards End" was like expecting "Howards End" to have the same effect as "Shakespeare Wallah" -- two completely different experiences. It's entirely possible, in fact, that Merchant-Ivory might not have done as good a job on "Le Divorce" had they not made "Howards End" first. It's a matter of process. My point being, that each film must be judged on its own merits.I've read a couple of comments and message board posts that complain about how the movie makes French people look -- arrogant, garrulous, etc. I think that's overstating a generalization. The movie makes THESE PARTICULAR French people look arrogant and garrulous, because they are -- and devious and self-centered and boorish. But to leap to the conclusion that the movie is making a statement about all French people is patently ridiculous. "The views expressed by the characters in this movie are entirely their own".On the other hand, one has to remember that Diane Johnson, who wrote the book and a number of books about the culture since, spends half her time in France. She does't take her subjects lightly; she's an intelligent, thoughtful, and though-provoking writer, and I would urge the people who find the movie too subjective to go to its source and read the book. They will find that the book is written from the point of view of one person, and is about the relations between two families -- not two complete cultures. Just because people say something about a culture does't make it true. Perception itself is subjective. In the book (I can't recall if this occurs in the film, I'll have to see it again) Uncle Edgar, perhaps the most sensible character, himself speaks those words that send a shiver of annoyance up my spine: "You Americans. You think..." As if we all think the same thing (and we all know THAT isn't true!). It shows that subjectivity is a common human trait, that we look at the world with our own particular set of blinders, filter our thought through our cultural stance, although I think that perhaps French thought is more synthesized and common than American thought which is, by nature of the population, more diverse.In the end I think that the book and the film are VERY objective, and let us look at our own judgmental selves and see how the judgmental and subjective nature of our thought and attitude can be damaging and inhibiting. I think that's the theme, and it comes across very well.

It beggars belief that James Ivory would conceive of such a film in 2003. It all feels like a soft-focus Eurotrash/American melodrama from the 1980s, with its soft-focus lensing and European clichés. The acting leaves a lot to be desired and is often very wooden and awkward as the European actors strive to be convincing in the English language - Melville Poppaud in particular is miscast as the cheating husband.Not even Naomi Watts can save the day. She is also miscast alongside her screen sister Kate Hudson. Both are above the material but fail to rise above the clichéd and mediocre script.Le Divorce is a pitiful embarrassment and belongs on 1980s TV as a mini-series rather than a fully-fledged feature film.