User reviews

Based on "The Return" by Joseph Conrad, "Gabrielle" tells the story of a woman in turn-of-the-century Paris who rebels against a loveless marriage.

Jean Hervey is a successful newspaper publisher whose life is ruled far more by social obligation and ritual than by emotion or passion. He extends this philosophy to all areas of his life, even to his own wife, whom he sees less as a person with a basic human need for intimacy and passion than as an attractive ornament to be placed beside all the other artwork in his impressive collection of Greek statuary. He even proclaims rather proudly - as if it were evidence of his imperviousness to the weakness of the flesh - that, though he and his wife do share the same bedroom, they sleep in different beds. Yet, he is not above deluding himself into believing that he actually loves her, although he is the first to admit that real love requires far too much effort to really be worth his time. He takes pride in her "placid" nature, which he feels serves him well in her function as hostess for the dinner parties he throws for his friends like clockwork every Thursday night. One day, however, Jean's studiously ordered world is shattered when he finds a note from Gabrielle informing him that she has run off with another man. A few moments later, though, Gabrielle mysteriously returns home, having been unable to make that final break for reasons not entirely fathomable either to herself or to us. The remainder of the film is spent examining the couple's efforts to cope with the situation.

This theme - of an aristocratic, free-spirited woman trapped in a figurative gilded cage by either the man in her life or society as a whole - was not exactly a novel one even at the time the story was written, but what separates "Gabrielle" from similar works is its unique concentration on the man instead of the woman, on HIS repression and inadequacies rather than hers. This leads to a conclusion rich in irony as Jean, the passionless purveyor of propriety, becomes ever more eaten up by his own jealousies and obsessions. Jean reveals much of what he's thinking through voice-over narration, as Gabrielle serves as a catalyst for his own emotional revolution.

If "Gabrielle" reminds us of anything, it is of a film by Ingmar Bergman, one in which the characters talk out the minutiae of their relationships and their innermost feelings and thoughts at almost agonizing length - tedious to some in the audience, perhaps, but fascinating to others. Patrice Chereau and Anne-Louise Trividic's literate screenplay plumbs the depths of the two souls involved, while Chereau's direction keeps things moving by employing a camera that sweeps with almost reckless abandon through the dusky rooms and crowded salons where the action takes place.

Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory are perfectly cast foils as the husband and wife for whom "love" is no longer a viable option. Each of the actors seethes with an intensity that reveals the passions that have long lain dormant under the couple's placid exteriors.

Although Gabrielle may be the first of the two to throw off the cloak of respectability and go for what really matters, it is Jean's intense struggle with his own inner demons that commands most of our attention. For despite the title being "Gabrielle," the film turns out to be much more Jean's story in the end than hers.

I've been watching & thoroughly enjoying Isabelle Huppert's films since 'The Lacemaker'. This time, what struck me was the intensity of Huppert's next-to-passive, almost casually indifferent postures of contempt for her husband. It is because of her being so minimal and apathetic that her performance harnesses its power and devastation. And this is what enhances Greggory's reactive performance as being so complementary, that of a once smug now tortured soul who slips and struggles to re-grasp a heart turned cold. He's just left grabbing air in the end. The looks on the faces of the chorus, their social clique & the servants in the troubled Hervey household says it all.

Going in, I was reminded of another story of martial discord, David Hughes Jone's 'Betrayal' but 'Gabrielle' hit me as being more incisive and oppressive than anything I've seen adapted for Pinter. I don't need to state the obvious that parlor films of this variety appeal only to those with an acquired taste. As for me, I can only say that I prefer the ice cubes that go with my scotch jagged & stinging cold like the ingredients in this film.

Joseph Conrad wrote his novella, "The Return" in tribute to Henry James, whose "The Spolis of Poynton" inspired him to write about a man who regards people as objects of ownership-- and is gobsmacked when his most prized possession, his wife, walks out on him. On the page it's a tight little chamber piece, with overtones of Ibsen and Strindberg. On the screen the great Patrice Chereau turns it into something else -- an opera in which the images sing rather than the performers. Pascale Greggory is in top form as a haute bourgeois "man who has everything" whose smugness masks a total disdain for feeling. When the superb Isabelle Huppert leaves a note to say she's leaving, the brandy decanter he drops echoes like the sword of Siegfried in Chereau's famed production of Wagner's "Ring" cycle. (Fabio Vacchi's amazing Alban Berg-like score seals the deal on this aspect of the work.) The dramatic set-to that results finds our non-hero groping for words to speak to the feelings he's never experienced before -- longing, regret, and finally grief at the loss of a love he's never allowed himself to know.

As far from Merchant-Ivory as one can possibly imagine Chereau and production designer Olivier Radot (new to la famille Chereau) place the action in a museum-like mansion where a small army of servants move about at the service of this infernal couple and their friends. Scenes of their fashionable parties suggest the Verdurins in Proust with cinematographer Eric Gauthier indulging in a color palette that makes the screen seem like a Manet come to life.

Chereau is doubtless familiar with what Georges Bataille wrote of Manet: "A little superficial perhaps, but driven by inner forces that gave him no rest, Manet was possessed by a desire for something beyond his reach which he never fully understood and which left him for ever tantalized and unsatisfied, on the brink of nervous exhaustion." That's perfect description of the emotional heart of this very great film.

Gabrielle (2005) is a French film written and co-directed by Patrice Chéreau. It's based on a novella by Joseph Conrad.

Pascal Greggory plays Jean Hervey. He's a very wealthy businessman. He's healthy and apparently happy.

His wife, Gabrielle, is elegant and sophisticated, albeit aloof. Gabrielle is portrayed by Isabelle Huppert.

This movie sounded good on paper, but it just didn't work for me. Partly that's because Patrice Chéreau is better known as a theater director and the film looks more like a play than it looks like a movie.

Huppert is one of my favorite actors, but she's wrong for this role. We're told over and over that the couple has been married ten years, but Huppert looks closer to 50 when, in context, she should be 35 or 40. (Well, she was 52 at the time, and she has every right to look 50, but it's not appropriate for this movie.)

Finally, director Chéreau uses strange and unnecessary devices. He switches from black-and-white to sepia to color. He uses title cards like the old silent movies. The characters talk and talk, but nothing much gets said.

If a film isn't going to be enjoyable, it should teach us something. All I learned from this movie is that if you speak cruelly to your maids, they just have to bear it. Apparently, it's part of the job description to just endure.

I didn't enjoy any aspect of this film. It's hard for me to criticize an Isabel Huppert movie. I thought she could make it work. Not this time. Gabrielle has a dreadful IMDb of 6.4. I agree with my fellow raters and rated it 6.

Pascal Greggory has it made - on paper, at least. A town house only marginally smaller than the Musee d'Orsay, complete with a full complement of servants - a lifestyle in fact that it seems only Prince Charles aspires to today - and last but not least a trophy wife in the shape of Isabelle Huppert. Ah, there's the rub, as someone once said because picture his chagrin when he comes home one evening after a hard day's flaneuring to find a note in his wife's unmistakable hand to the effect that she's had it up to here and has taken it on the Jesse Owens with a lover about whom until now she has been so discreet it isn't true. But this is only the beginning for hardly has the ink had time to dry on the letter than she is back again and this is where the story really starts given that the bulk of the movie is the exploration of this angle at length. Pascal Greggory makes a convincing heavy - he was last seen at it in the latest remake of Arsene Lupin - and though he is ostensibly the victim and wronged party here he still manages to play it like a villain. I can't honestly claim to be a fan of Chereau and nothing in this effort really changes my mind but I am a fan of Isabelle Huppert and she obliges with her usual fine performance in the second film in a row (after Les Souers Fachees) in what will, we hope, turn out to be her new sleaze-free choice of roles.

Well, its a movie or story about a SIMP / husband and his unhappy cheating wife. one night she left husband for lover but she returned sooner. and there the whole spend on their conversation about what went wrong.

Gabrielle has fine actors, beautiful camera work and features a detailed look at upper crust French parlor society in the early 1900s. It is also one of the more boring and stifling pictures we've seen in a long time. Huppert is a great actress but she is wasted here. If the director was going to do a Conrad adaptation, the original story needed to be better converted for cinema because it just didn't work. There was incessant, drone-on talking which went nowhere. There was little or no character development. Overall the 90 minute movie felt like three and a half hours, for no payoff. The ending was just truncated and very unsatisfying.

I have to come out in the middle on this one. It is not as great and brilliant as some say. On the other side, it is not as boring and cold as other people say.

Yes, it is very much a two character stage play. There are however, a number of camera and editing tricks that keep the viewer off-balance. The switching from black and white to color, for example, is startling and effective.

The acting isn't really movie acting, it is stage acting. One could justify it to an extent in that the main characters are wealthy and highly mannered in their speech and action. However, this carries over into the servants who display a bland seriousness in all their actions as well. On the whole, the stylized acting is a draw back to the audience's character involvement, while adding to the alienating atmosphere.

See it when you are in a somber mood and your close relationships are not working out. You'll feel better knowing that there have been couples worse off than you.

On the positive side, there are a few tense and gripping moments in the film that suddenly pop out. The scene where the man finds the letter from his wife is one of those scenes. It is not exactly unforgettable, but it is quite effective and gripping.

At times, the movie seems like the Cliff Notes for "Scenes From a Marriage" Still, for all its faults there is a clear prospective on marriage in a certain near high society social class. The film gets some credit for showing that it is not particularly pretty when you look closely at it. It deserves credit for its sincerity and honesty.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as much of a film snob as anyone out there...but if you want to see a French film in which two characters spend the entire time arguing about a relationship, I strongly recommend skipping this tedious and basically shallow flick and watching instead Hiroshima Mon Amour or Last Year at Marienbad (both directed by Alain Resnais).

Gabrielle is a strange film...the loud, tense music, the effects of lighting, the experimental flashing of words on the screen...all are wasted, in my opinion, on the more or less trite and endlessly circular argument the two characters carry out throughout the film. The music, especially, often seems to bear no relationship at all or an extremely overblown one to the scene it is involved with.

A lot of the reviews you will read here say you should think of this film as more of an opera or a play...but this is a FILM...and the story needs to be suited to that medium. It ISN'T!!!

Obviously we don't all like the same things. One commentator said it was all just talk, as if that were a bad thing. I happen to love language and words, and in particular love the French language. So that is the reason I rent a movie in French. I also have a very strong aversion to "action movies" where language is reduced to "Ow! Help! Duck!" On the other hand, movies like Gabrielle where minute movements of the psyche are explored in depth by minimalistic means, these are what grip me, move me, keep me interested. I do not really think the movie is like an opera -- it was more like a french play -- the delivery and velocity of the spoken word was very much in the style of french live theater.

My only caveat is that French-ness and Conrad seem a strange mix to me. There was another French movie that was made on a Conrad text, and I had a similar reaction. Conrad is not writing about French society. And yet the action has been transplanted to France. And it seems an entirely incongruous transplant to me -- plopping the joyless uprightness of puritanical England (the only place name mentioned is "West End Station" into a such a lively Latin culture which has always had a much more relaxed attitude towards love and sex... well,to me it's just incongruous.

Nevertheless, it was an cleverly crafted movie, and the musical score by Fabio Vacchi was unearthly beautiful.

Patrice Chéreau, director of La Reine Margot and Intimacy, has made with Gabrielle a bad movie. The movie, in total, is to theatrical. Casting Isabelle Huppert as Gabrielle was a bad choice, Pascal Greggory plays good at some moments , but his anger does not reach the audience. The whole film is spoken in a wired, poetical language that makes the movie unbelievable and even boring when the same character speaks for about ten minutes without any interruption. Jean (Pascal Greggory) does a good acting-job at the ending, where he's anger is serious and realistic. Unbelievable people could give this a ten, not bad enough to give it a zero.

** (/out of five)

This is a wonderfully acted dramatization of 19th Century English society, with 'invisible' servants in excess, stereotyped poses and inhibitions built around social mores of what should have been an unbelievable epoch. However, the 21st Century music, cinematic tricks (black and white to color switches) and pretentiousness of the direction distract the viewer from what should have been provocative and gripping themes. Understanding the emotional impacts of the customs, social strata and expectations during this era should have been fascinating, but somehow becomes boring in this film. One tires of seeing the four servants in the kitchen washing, drying or watching the handling of a single dish, or the two or more servants who appear for almost any activity, or even the regularly attended Thursday dinner parties suggest that privacy is an alien concept to that milieu.

This incredible adaptation of Joseph Conrad's story,"The Return" has been haunting me for days. The visual beauty of its cinematography in contrast to the devastating psychological and emotional pain of its characters, brilliantly portrayed by Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Gregory. has rarely been achieved in film. No need here to repeat the details of the story...I do however want to point out what I have not read in any reviews or comments...that this is basically, as I see it, an evocation of the power and control struggle in a marriage...that moves between husband and wife in the most fascinating and brilliant way. My most grateful appreciation and admiration to Patrice Chereau for giving us this remarkable film. In a time of blockbuster, action movies, what a joy to experience a work of art that provides intense emotion, intelligent food for thought and visual nurturance.

It's really interesting to read all the gushing reviews of the film on this board. Interesting in that my experience watching this film last week at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) was completely the opposite. I haven't read the Joseph Conrad original so perhaps I needed to do so, to better appreciate the story.

Of the 18 films I've seen at the festival so far, I found this film to be the least personally engaging and most frustrating. Uninvolving story and unlikable lead characters coupled with a tedious pace completely annoyed me. A passionless marriage and the consequences of a single action were also clearly not enough to keep many from walking out of my session. My feeling was that the film would never have been included in the festival if not for the clout of Huppert and the fact that it was French. I found her performance irritating and lifeless - perhaps that was the point and I didn't appreciate it enough. I felt occasional moments of 'Last Year At Marienbad' when watching except that I really enjoyed that film unlike this one. If this had been an Australian made film, the knives would surely have been out, for "wasting tax payers money" etc in the press. Interesting to note in the now completed 2006 Sydney Film Festival that it ranked 25th with the audience vote in a field of 25 world cinema features screened. So clearly others have shared my pain.

I saw this dark oeuvre yesterday at the Boston French Film Festival at the MFA.It was chosen to be the Opening night Film and was sold out.The director was present and spoke at length about what drew him to make the film and what was important about it- for him. I felt the film-making was fascinating. From the opening sequence, where the footage in the train station is SO realistic in its early 20th c. appearance, and throughout the film, I found the cinematography to be lush, stylized, extremely well-framed and riveting .It is a perfect voice for the story. The actors are always IN YOUR FACE and this fact, combined with an economic and well written script, heavy dark music, tremendously accurate and effective set design, and spot-on acting, made for an extremely moving and interesting exploration of the story. For me, in tone and context, it felt a bit like Henry James' Portrait of a Lady (and probably works by Ibsen and others) Isabelle Huppert and her husband are extremely wealthy, cold, unemotional,detached from themselves and others, and 'safe' in that world. Their house-where 99% of the film takes place, is a dark, heavy, classical, structured prison.(The director's background in stage directing is very evident in this film.) One little bubble bursts from that prison and then things change and the disintegration begins. It gives one a great deal to think about. My only problem with the film is the MUSIC.The music is as much an element of the film as the actors. That is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, but in the last 20 minutes of the film, it is just WAY TOO MUCH: too heavy, too loud, and too repetitive;a bit like Bruchner at his worst. But if you are able to see a DVD of this, you can turn down this overkill. If you are lucky enough to see the film live (so important for major artistic cinematography like this) you'll just have to deal with it; maybe it won't bother you so much.At any rate, the film will provide those so inclined with many things to think about and discuss. And visuals to remember. For me,I will always carry the image of Huppert, dressed in black, on that enormous settee... it's a Degas.

French language period set chick flick that was so banally turgid and pretentious that I wanted to scratch thine own eyes out in those brief lucid periods I was awake. One thing I did share with what I expect the females in the audience were experiencing was the shedding of tears, the stark difference being that mine were tears of blood. If it had been a play I would have rushed out, brought a gun, then rushed back to shoot the actors on stage for in my opinion they deserve nothing but death. Put briefly, in turn of the century Paris a rather arrogant man rather abruptly finds out that his wife of 10 years desires to leave him for another man. Much talking is done. Then much more talking is done. This is followed by lengthy periods of talking. More talking. Then wrapped up with, surprisingly, talking. But it's all done in an almost monologue method , briefly interspersed with large titles on screen which I expect the makers of the movie thought to be profound yet I found completely ridiculous (the film ends with the words "AND HE NEVER RETURNED!". I thought it rude of me to puke on the floor of so gorgeous a theatre (the State in Sydney, such a beautiful and elaborate place) so I resisted with all my might). I left the cinema with a headache. Not in any way due to the complexity and depth of the story I'd just seen, but because I just wasted what I now consider to be the most valuable 90 minutes of my life ever. Even now I want to cry.

I see a great number of art-house films, so I'm not a pop culture heathen and I own many great titles in my own private DVD collection that I watch and treasure. I have nothing against glacial pacing, indeed for many wonderful films it is often delicious to slowly savour the unfolding occurrences (In My Fathers Den, Lantana, Insomnia, Mar Adentro etc) and my own favorites are indie films like Requiem For A Dream and Mysterious Skin (tho honestly a film one need watch only once due to its power and disturbing subject matter). But in this instance I would never have thought a "French language art-house drama" would be the type of film that in my opinion, gives the Adam Sandler film The Waterboy a run for it's money.

Complete dross.

This movie shows us the painful scenes of a loveless marriage of ten years finally coming apart. The husband and wife are played by Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, two of the best and ideally cast. But ten minutes into the movie the unsure dialog, really awful music track and the obvious manipulation by the director take over and spoil everything. The pace is jerky, too many abrupt changes of mood...nothing resonates. There are surreal scenes....guests fill the room, a lady sings a modern classical song...the couple continue their pathological exploration of what went wrong in loud voice...the guests and vocalist ignore them. All of this reeks of it's derivation from Ingmar Bergman, but Bergman did it so much better. Stick with Scenes From a Marriage and Saraband if you want to see how as failed marriage should be screened.

Patrice Chéreau and his team continue to amaze. Their recent movies--"Intimacy" and "Son frère"--have been wild, and Isabelle Huppert has played some wild roles too. But "Gabrielle" is a masterpiece of control, an equal of the studio movies of Fritz Lang in the 1940s. A benchmark is Hitchcock's "Rebecca." Like those movies, every shot here, each turn of the head, is a statement of emotion (and a test of the actors' skill). Now not only music tells what the characters are doing, light is further nuanced with color. The almost-homage to black-and-white is astonishing, because it can also be lit into color, showing the characters' being forced to be here and now without escaping to old assumptions: a bitten lip bleeds red, a serving woman elaborately brings a softly glowing lamp upstairs. (A friend objects that the house has electricity, but the same friend puts candles on the dinner table, and this lamp has a purpose.) There's a thesis in Film Studies for the communicative devices of each scene and what is referenced, like the way there is a less flamboyant version of scenes in Ruiz's "Le temps retrouvé." But then being restrained is the theme, and the tension is extreme without any thunderstorm or overt thrill (a thrill for these characters might be the horror). If the source story was Conrad's homage to Henry James, here is a movie worthy of their capacity for narrative of the highest watchfulness and precision. Stay totally alert, movie goers.

a very dull film

This film displays the time period with great accuracy, the attitudes of the upper class and there lifestyle. The problem is we never learn or are shown anything particularly interesting about it. the film only really gets going right at end, when we start to see remotely interesting dialogue and situations but the film is a long hard slog to reach this point.

While admittedly the 'experimental' effects gave us a good laugh afterwards. They contributed little to the story and their only purpose seemed to be to get the word experimental mentioned in any review of film. the inter-titles were both woefully pointless and at times laughable. the music created horror like tension at times which just added to your disappointment when one of the characters did not lose a head.

there are plenty of short stories out there dying to bet converted into movies WHY in the world did the director choose this one.

Patrice Chéreau is one of the giants of entertainment, whether in his direction of operas (his Wagner RING remains a gold standard), plays, or his films. He is a thoroughgoing artist, one who combines great intellect with a keen ear for music, camera movement, atmosphere, the spoken and unspoken word, and for accompanying some of the finest actors at work today in their realization of his visions.

GABRIELLE is a case in point and for this viewer this is simply one of the strongest films to come out of France - a country much celebrated for its cinematic genius - in many years. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's short story 'The Return' and adapted as a screenplay by Anne-Louise Trividic and Chéreau, the story is a brief history of a married couple whose ten-year marriage alters in one afternoon and evening - the time span of the film.

Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory) is a handsome man of wealth who 'acquired' a wife Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) ten years ago. They live in a mausoleum of magnificent art and base their existence on the glamorous parties attended by the artists and patrons of the arts in turn of the century Paris. Jean's 'acquisition' of Gabrielle included the understanding that they would have no intimacy: they do sleep in the same bedroom but in separate beds. Their marriage seems perfect - but it is hollow. Rather abruptly Gabrielle leaves a note on the dresser addressed to Jean, a note that states she has left him for a man: her need for sexual gratification has risen to the breaking point. Jean is devastated, but as he nurses his broken glass-injured hand Gabrielle returns: she could not go through with ending the marriage of convenience. The two have extended verbal exchanges and physical abuse but it is only to the servants that Gabrielle shares her true feelings. She decides to structure her marriage to Jean by submitting to him sexually, a status that is novel to their marriage, and it is this role reversal of the masculine/feminine state that sends Jean panicked into the night.

Chéreau uses many techniques to render this story about intimacy (or the lack thereof) that strongly support the power of the film: sections are in black and white representing the way things appear and are structured to the planned observation; Raina Kabaivanska plays and sings at a soirée (she is an actual opera star); Jean's staff of servants is only women instead of the usual mix of men and women; the musical score by the brilliant Italian contemporary composer Fabio Vacchi is used as a 'character' instead of background support; and the camera work by cinematographer Eric Gautier uses a full cinemascope camera set up to add weight to the project.

But none of these subtleties would have worked so perfectly without the brilliance of acting of Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory. They find the core of these strange characters and allow us to understand the rather warped psyches of the pair. It is a feat of genius. As an added DVD feature there is an extended conversation with Chéreau, Huppert and Greggory about the film from the initial idea to the finished product and hearing these three brilliant artists share their insights is for once extremely additive to the film. This rather dark and brooding film may be a bit too static for some, but for lovers of cinematic art it is a complete triumph to experience. Grady Harp

Oh, dear. I cannot agree. The film is beautifully acted and sumptuously lit. Yes, it's Ibsenian in its relentless pursuit of the dark and hopeless but surely the most beautiful pay off of all is that while we all accuse HIM of being a soul-less, empty, proud and passionless man and sympathise with her - Huppert - and her confused search for freedom, the real truth is that she is as passionless, empty and love-less as he is. Why did she come back to him after she ran away? Exactly. His emptiness is her true home; it's with him she truly belongs in that cold, dark, rich and emotionally impoverished house, with its parties of unlikeable, unsympathetic guests who pass for 'society'; that cold, cold music of the piano recital at their last soirée. It's a long film, true, but it's a considerably well constructed one. Look again. David.