By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Patrice Chéreau
Starring: Claudia Coli | Isabelle Huppert | Pascal Greggory
Country: france, germany, italy
Year: 2006
Running time: 90
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435479/combined
Bruce says: “GABRIELLE is based on Joseph Conrad’s short story ‘The Return’ considered an anomaly by anyone familiar with his works of fiction, which mostly depict various aspects of adventurous seafaring life and occasionally take jabs at European imperialism. Conrad was certainly a man of the world. Born in the Ukraine, raised in Russia and Switzerland, and schooled in Poland, Conrad enlisted in the French merchant marine and ultimately commanded his own ship before settling down in England to become a writer. ‘I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced,’ Conrad wrote
in Heart of Darkness. That he would write a story about a Victorian couple deceived, stifled and victimized by endless rules constricting their behavior is difficult to reckon.
“Patrice Chéreau has transported the couple’s mise en scène to Paris and given them new names without changing their thoughts and actions. Whether or not the generally more permissive continental Belle Époque held the same constrictions as Victorian England is beside the point; even in a more carefree Europe the upper middle class had rules which established their position, gave them power and, as a byproduct, inhibited their behavior.
“Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory ) returns home early one workday to find a letter from his wife Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) telling him that she has left him for another man. He is shocked; appalled, actually. He had never questioned his marriage. Before his shock is completely registered, Gabrielle returns home; she has changed her mind and ignored her rendezvous. She is not well received. ‘If only you had died,’ her husband spits out. Immediately his thinking turns to covering up the whole incident, after all only her lover knew about the affair. He declares that they’ll go on as if nothing happened; even the servants need not know. Hervey declares his love for Gabrielle but she coldly replies,’You are deceiving yourself. You never loved me. You wanted a wife – some woman – any woman that would think, speak and behave in a certain way – in a way you approved. You loved yourself.’ ‘If I had believed you loved me,’ she continues ‘. . . I would never have come back.’
“At this point we are prepared to side with Gabrielle but flashbacks to their weekly Thursday salons, the revelation that her lover is the man her husband has backed in business (Thierry Hancisse) and intimate scenes with her maid quickly lessen our sympathy. Gabrielle shows her true colors as she belittles and dismisses her maid Yvonne (Claudia Coli), her closest ally.
“Conrad describes Hervey as having’“overbearing brutality…given by the only partly difficult accomplishments…the art of making money; by the mastery over animals and over needy men.’ He thought of Gabrielle as ‘a well-bred girl, as a wife, as a cultured person, as the mistress of a house, as a lady; but he never for a moment thought of her simply as a woman.’ Her leaving dealt a heavy blow. As Hervey reminisces about his wife’s physical demeanor, her pattern of speech Conrad writes, ‘All that had been so much his property.’
“The most fascinating aspect of the story is the tracing of Hervey’s stream of consciousness as he processes the immediate facts, then reevaluates them in the context of his life as a whole. GABRIELLE makes its social statement strongly but the all pervasive rules governing the middle classes have less relevance today than in decades past. Isabelle Huppert performs her role with dignity and a pervasive frustration. Pascal Greggory is superb as the priggish Hervey. The film is both lush and claustrophobic
as befitting the story. Chéreau has definitely improved upon an interesting literary aberration. 3.5 cats
“GABRIELLE was shown at the 2005 Toronto International film Festival. As of now it has no distribution in any English speaking country.”