La Femme du cosmonaute is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1998, directed by Jacques Monnet.  The film stars Victoria Abril, Gérard Lanvin, Rossy de Palma, Gérard Hernandez and Bernard Verley.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Anna can hardly believe her good fortune when her astronaut husband, Jean-Paul, is selected for a solo space mission which will take him out of her life for six whole months.  The couple is on the point of splitting up and a separation of a few hundred thousand miles is just what their relationship needs.  However, Anna’s new-found freedom proves to be short lived.  Jean-Paul’s colleagues install a system in their home which allows Anna to be in constant communication with her husband.  Thanks to a large-screen television and satellite link-up, Jean-Paul can see and be seen by his wife and their two young sons every minute of their waking day.  At first, this miracle of modern technology seems to improve things between Anna and Jean-Paul.  But, once the novelty value has worn off, the strain of their marriage soon begins to assert itself once more.  What neither Jean-Paul nor Anna realise is that they are both being watched, for they are the subjects of a unique sociological experiment...

One of French cinema’s weirder portrayals of marital strife, La Femme du cosmonaute is a witty and engaging little film which is almost the perfect comedy vehicle for the popular Spanish beauty, Victoria Abril.  It is pure sitcom material, with an ordinary husband and wife drifting apart in a barrage of mutual sarcasm and petty squabbles; naturally, they can’t quite separate because, despite the flying crockery and broken glass in the muesli, they still love each other.  What makes this particular treatment different is that while She is stuck at home minding the kids, He is in a pod orbiting planet Earth.

The formula may sound crazy but somehow it works, mainly because the situations and characters are true to life, albeit slightly caricatured.   The casting of such likeable and talented performers as Gérard Lanvin and Victoria Abril certainly helps bridge the credibility gap – although it should be said that Abril is only marginally less convincing as a housewife than Lanvin is as an astronaut.  With some well-scripted gags and a story that is not without some poignancy, La Femme du cosmonaute offers an enjoyable variation on a familiar theme.

© James Travers 2008

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