Gabrielle

***1/2

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 voiceover 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.

Operatic in tone (director Patrice Chereau has mounted numerous stage and opera productions), based on a short story by Joseph Conrad, beautifully costumed and photographed, acted in the high-toned manner of an Ibsen or Chekhov play, "Gabrielle" nonetheless proves to be rooted in the basest of emotions: Jealousy, Envy, Hate, Disgust and of course, Love.

Isabelle Huppert as Gabrielle and Pascal Greggory as her husband Jean Hervey are rich, entitled and seemingly cold as ice, frozen emotionally even. Jean is a man whose friends tell him he possesses "the cold stare of achievement." Both he and Gabrielle are seemingly content with their loveless and sex-less marriage, their place in Society: that is until one day Gabrielle admits she is having an affair.

Set at the beginning of the 20th Century, La Belle Epoque, reeking of Velvet Brocades, Absinthe, Salon Thursdays in which Artists of every nature perform, servants who brush off the "Master's" shoes every time he enters the house, "Gabrielle" literally suffocates with hot-house, jasmine scented period touches which serve to heighten and underscore the raging tempest brewing in Chez Hervey.

In many ways, "Gabrielle" recalls the savage, similarly themed "Closer" of a few years back in its go for the jugular manner. But whereas "Closer" operates in the contemporary world in which derision, infidelity and online porn are in your face...accepted even expected, "Gabrielle's" 1912 world, though just as emotionally brutal and stagnate, is hidden, closeted, tight as Gabrielle's corseted torso.

Made after Conrad's short story "Return", this is a story of a wealthy, married couple living in predictable, stable marriage surrounded by luxury, art, salon gatherings and -- emotional restraint. Husband is a self made rich man who finds all beauty around him to be something to collect and adore from a distance. Wife on the other hand is the epithomy of class, good manners, classical beauty. Isabel Huppert is known for being able to deliver solid performance for complicated characters. Her face, beauty and the way she moves enhances the regal surroundings of the household visitors she moves around, dress she is wearing, music she listens to. But when she leaves all that for another man and then comes back to her husband within less than two hours, it opens up all the questions between her, her spouse, her relationship with the house servants, and weekly guests that are regulars at their salon. The visual beauty of the movie turns inside out to the beauty of the words and language between all these individuals that are part of such traumatic development in the household considered to be content on the way things ought to be in the high society of the 20th century. This movie is developing almost in slow motion where viewer becomes willing participant in torturing revelation about husband and wife, power switch in their marriage and realization of the truth that eventually distroys them and their relationship completely. P. Greggory and I. Huppert mash so well in their battle with words, it is absolutely tantalizing to let go of them for even a minute.

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