Gilles’ Wife

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Feature: C+

 

 

So many stories about marital infidelity have been done that it is no surprise that a film like Brokeback Mountain (reviewed elsewhere on this site) is a hit because the heterosexual stories have been played out.  That was certainly the case with Frederic Fonteyne’s film Gilles’ Wife, a 2004 feature about the title character (Emmanuelle Devos) who discovers that her husband (Clovis Cornillac) is having an affair with her own sister (Laura Smet).  It is an ugly situation and children are involved, but here it is yet again.

 

The problem is that though the film is intelligent and acting good, it cannot escape the clichés about the interactions and the film is choppy all the way to the mixed resolution.  If anything, there are plenty of questions the film does not even attempt to answer and if the excuse is that the characters are supposed to have limited knowledge, the audience eventually catches up with the film and becomes smarter that the film.  That is why it fails.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is decent, with good detail, color consistency and a clean look throughout.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is simple with no surrounds.  The combination is watchable.  Extras include deleted scenes with director’s commentary, a making of featurette and the original French theatrical trailer.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo