“Gabrielle”Studio CanalDirected by Patrice ChereauScreenplay by Patrice Chereau and Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the short story The Return by Joseph ConradStarring: Pascal Greggory, Isabelle Huppert, Claudia Coli and Thierry HancisseNot rated/90 minutesOpened Dec. 1, 2006Two out of four stars
Patrice Chereau’s “Gabrielle” gives whole new meaning to “taking the long way.” The scenic route, if you will. Indeed, if Chereau had to go to the grocery store down the street, he’d probably drive in the complete opposite direction for 10 miles, take a joy ride through the mountains, get on the highway, flip a U-turn through heavy traffic, take two rights and a left using exclusively one-way streets, stop at the petrol station for an afternoon fill-up, then turn around, head west for a few blocks and, upon finally reaching his destination, drive around in a circle in the lot for five minutes before finally parking right up front, buying a carton of milk and going home.
If that sounds like a bit of an ordeal, wait until you see “Gabrielle,” Chereau’s irritating and over-written examination of marital breakdown in early 20th-century France. Of course, “marital breakdown” in this context doesn’t mean the same thing as we might be used to. The marriage in question, Jean (Pascal Greggory) and Gabrielle’s (Isabelle Huppert), is more of a business arrangement than anything else. Even Jean, our narrator, admits that he treasures her as a collector might treasure his most prized possession. As a couple, they host lavish dinner parties every Thursday night and live a life in which money is never hard to come by. Betrayal is never a worry because?well, why would either of them mess with a good thing?
Which makes it all the more curious, especially to Jean, when Gabrielle actually does betray him, leaving him for another man, only to return to her “comfort zone” at Jean’s estate a few hours later. What ensues is basically 90 minutes of vitriolic conversation between Jean and Gabrielle as they examine the meaning of their relationship in the most complex terms possible.
The weight and strength of the two central performances themselves are enough to keep this going for a while. As Jean, Greggory is calculating and vicious; during the expositional first 15 minutes, he is utterly unflappable, but shows sudden signs of extreme vulnerability upon his wife’s betrayal, which turns his perfectly structured life into chaos. What’s interesting is how he doesn’t so much feel emotions as he deduces what emotions he’s supposed to feel. When he first approaches Gabrielle upon her return, he’s doing nothing more than going through theatrical motions, one after another. One moment Jean is gentle and romantic, the next he’s flying off the handle, with no rhyme or reason. The character comes across like an over-anxious acting student auditioning for his first play.
Gabrielle is more of an enigma, which makes sense since we see her only through Jean’s eyes. But, we discover, she can be just as calculating and just as vicious as her husband — and every bit as unlikable.
Great acting aside, the film falls apart because of Chereau’s insistence on making it as arty and complicated as possible. “Gabrielle” goes back and forth between color and black-and-white for no reason whatsoever. The dialogue runs (and runs and runs) in circles. And by the end of the film, we’ve gotten exactly where we expected to get, only it took much too long to get there.
I am not very familiar with The Return, the Joseph Conrad short story on which this film is based, but I can’t imagine this playing as badly in prose as it does on film. Chereau and co-writer Anne-Louise Trividic deserve the blame for this. Practically the entire film is focused on conversation between Jean and Gabrielle, which would be fine if said conversation wasn’t so insufferably bloated. No two human beings have ever actually talked to each other like this, because if they did neither would have any idea what the other was talking about. Have Chereau and Trividic ever actually listened to other people talk?
Some have raved about “Gabrielle” for its “thematic complexity” and, even worse, its “depth,” when in truth that needless complexity is only making the shallow look deeper.
Regardless of its merits, “Gabrielle” is the embodiment of the self-serious European art film that long ago became a tired self-parody.