...because that's the only way to get any enjoyment out of this thing.
Wow, what an unnecessary movie! Who exactly is the audience for this? Watching it I kept thinking about the fact there's absolutely no IN for the viewer. At least not for the one inhabiting planet Earth.
Story seems to take place in some kind of parallel universe - it contains not a single thing that either touched, moved, tickled or engaged me in the slightest. Pretty damn hard to have a romantic comedy with the characters who might as well have come from another galaxy.
Isabel (Kate Hudson), an American, comes to Paris to visit her 5-month pregnant sister Roxy (Naomi Watts). Her timing couldn't have been better since Roxy's French husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) with whom she already has a small daughter leaves her for parts unknown. And all this out of the blue activity is happening precisely at the moment Isabel is getting out of a cab that took her in from the airport.
Roxy's obviously distraught. Her husband soon informs her that he desires a divorce and not only that - he wants the property divided too. Besides the fact she doesn't want to grant him a legal split which would effectively be his ticket to marrying his loony Russian mistress Magda (Rona Hartner) who also happens to be married to another American nutjob (played by Mathew Modine), situation is even further complicated by an unclear ownership of a valuable painting they would have to split in the event of a divorce. And if that's not enough, Isabel has fallen under a spell of an aging suave and oily Frenchman who, of course, is married, and just happens to be Charles-Henri's uncle.
So, for those still reading, her lover is also the brother of the mother of her sister's estranged husband. Yes, it's like a high brow Jerry Springer episode.
But even that potentially intriguing storyline falls horrendously flat.
The movie just stumbles from one contrived scene to another. After pretty much everything else bombed it plays up the joshingly debilitated international observational humour. First, French men and American women are paired up. Then, the French family (which seems to consist exclusively of territorial females and promiscuous males) is brought out. Then, we add a Russian free spirit, followed by an American family that flies into Paris. And finally, even a quirky British appraiser finds his place on this smorgasbord. Needless to say, all is served with a lot of dopey banter in form of lame one-liners that point out 'keenly observed' characteristics of each nation.
And believe it or not, they even manage to stick in an attempted suicide and a double murder.
Even on a personal level 'Le Divorce' fails to arouse. Whether it's Charles-Henri's well-off family with their nationalistically inspired pursuit of the painting that's obviously not theirs or Roxy's and Isabel's family whose general listlessness even after learning of the fact their pregnant daughter just tried to kill herself is simply baffling, the movie's characters and their motivations are very unconvincing.
By the end my retina was sore from how many times I rolled my eyes in dismissive bemusement throughout the 117 minutes of this latest James Ivory offering.
Wow, what an unnecessary movie! Who exactly is the audience for this? Watching it I kept thinking about the fact there's absolutely no IN for the viewer. At least not for the one inhabiting planet Earth.
Story seems to take place in some kind of parallel universe - it contains not a single thing that either touched, moved, tickled or engaged me in the slightest. Pretty damn hard to have a romantic comedy with the characters who might as well have come from another galaxy.
Isabel (Kate Hudson), an American, comes to Paris to visit her 5-month pregnant sister Roxy (Naomi Watts). Her timing couldn't have been better since Roxy's French husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) with whom she already has a small daughter leaves her for parts unknown. And all this out of the blue activity is happening precisely at the moment Isabel is getting out of a cab that took her in from the airport.
Roxy's obviously distraught. Her husband soon informs her that he desires a divorce and not only that - he wants the property divided too. Besides the fact she doesn't want to grant him a legal split which would effectively be his ticket to marrying his loony Russian mistress Magda (Rona Hartner) who also happens to be married to another American nutjob (played by Mathew Modine), situation is even further complicated by an unclear ownership of a valuable painting they would have to split in the event of a divorce. And if that's not enough, Isabel has fallen under a spell of an aging suave and oily Frenchman who, of course, is married, and just happens to be Charles-Henri's uncle.
So, for those still reading, her lover is also the brother of the mother of her sister's estranged husband. Yes, it's like a high brow Jerry Springer episode.
But even that potentially intriguing storyline falls horrendously flat.
The movie just stumbles from one contrived scene to another. After pretty much everything else bombed it plays up the joshingly debilitated international observational humour. First, French men and American women are paired up. Then, the French family (which seems to consist exclusively of territorial females and promiscuous males) is brought out. Then, we add a Russian free spirit, followed by an American family that flies into Paris. And finally, even a quirky British appraiser finds his place on this smorgasbord. Needless to say, all is served with a lot of dopey banter in form of lame one-liners that point out 'keenly observed' characteristics of each nation.
And believe it or not, they even manage to stick in an attempted suicide and a double murder.
Even on a personal level 'Le Divorce' fails to arouse. Whether it's Charles-Henri's well-off family with their nationalistically inspired pursuit of the painting that's obviously not theirs or Roxy's and Isabel's family whose general listlessness even after learning of the fact their pregnant daughter just tried to kill herself is simply baffling, the movie's characters and their motivations are very unconvincing.
By the end my retina was sore from how many times I rolled my eyes in dismissive bemusement throughout the 117 minutes of this latest James Ivory offering.