Gabrielle (2005) - film review

Paris in the early 1900s.  Jean Hervey is a successful businessman who enjoys the popularity and comfort that his wealth brings him.  His greatest treasure is his wife, Gabrielle.  For ten years, they have made the perfect couple, admired by their entourage of friends and acquaintances.  Then, one day, without any warning, Jean finds a note in which Gabrielle announces her intention to leave him.  He has barely recovered from the trauma of this betrayal when Gabrielle returns to the house, having changed her mind.   Can Jean forgive this humiliation?

Here’s an almost perfect example of how a surfeit of stylistic excess and poor directorial judgement can utterly ruin what has the potential to be a remarkable film.  Anyone familiar with the films of Patrice Chéreau will be acquainted with this director’s tendency to push the boundary of excessive self-indulgence, usually with some degree of success.  In Gabrielle, he goes into hyperdrive, abandoning any vestige of self-restraint in what can only be described as an orgy of mad artistic profligacy.   Jump cuts, slow-motion photography, voice-over narration, idiot captions, haphazard switching between monochrome and colour, and a musical score that is every bit as discordant and unsettling as the images it accompanies.

Some hauntingly atmospheric photography and a tortured performance from the great Isabelle Huppert fail to shatter the film’s lumbering artificiality.  Although momentarily impressive in one or two brief sequences, the film is so marred by its excesses that it is hard to take it seriously, no matter how many bottles of life-preserving vino you may have at your disposal.  Whilst some may praise the film for its daring visual and narrative style, it is all too apparent that such excesses work against rather than support the underlying drama, preventing the spectator from developing any real sympathy for the protagonists. The overall result is a major disappointment, Chéreau’s weakest film to date.

© James Travers 2008

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