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.

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.

The day after giving an opulent dinner party a rich, smug gentleman in 1890's Paris is devastated to receive a note from his wife announcing that she's just left him for someone else. His wife is one of the cornerstones and chief decorations of his secure and beautiful life. She can't be gone. It's unthinkable. He is beside himself. But a few hours later, she reappears. She has changed her mind. He doesn't take her return at all well. The intent was there. She must have a lover. There follows a lot of talk but very little communication between Jean (Pascal Greggory) and Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) and between Gabrielle and her maid Yvonne (Claudia Coli). And then, another dinner party, given as if nothing had happened, with all the usual guests, including the other man, whose identity Gabrielle has revealed to her husband by now. The couple have a loud quarrel in front of everybody, which the guests all politely pretend to ignore. Later, in their bedroom, when the guests have departed, Gabrielle offers her body to Jean. He lies down beside her and begins to touch her, but then without himself undressing jumps up and asks, "There will be no love any more?" "No." "That is acceptable for you?" "Yes." "For me never!" And he rushes from the room and from the house. {Title, in huge letters across the screen:) HE NEVER RETURNED. End of film.

"Gabrielle" makes more sense if you see it as an opera -- a form in which Chéreau has long excelled as a production designer. The audience tittered at some of Jean's remarks; nonetheless Greggory's performance as a thick-headed, self-centered, unappealing bourgeois is convincing, impeccable. Isabelle Huppert as usual is wonderful to watch, but may seem too modern a woman for the role she has here. The talk works as arias rather than conversations. Each character is addressing an unseen audience, more than his or her interlocutor. A variety of formal devices -- big titles as in a silent film; gratingly assonant modern music behind the witty general conversation at the dinner party; segments of film shot in black and white, beginning with the introduction where Jean appears arriving by train with his voice-over describing his perfect life -- are used to cut through the wild emotional disorder on display. Based on the Joseph Conrad story "The Return," which Chéreau and company have made into a film of frigid grandeur.

Seen at the New York Film Festival October 2005 and SFIFF April 2006. Shown at Chicago Festival October 2005 . Rights bought by Wellspring at NYFF for US theatrical release in spring 2006. French DVD release 19 April 2006.