Nathalie... (2003)

Nathalie... is a French romantic film drama first released in 2003, directed by Anne Fontaine.  The film stars Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Béart, Gérard Depardieu, Wladimir Yordanoff and Judith Magre.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Catherine, a gynaecologist, has been married to Bernard, a businessman, for twenty years. When she finds out that Bernard has been sleeping with other women, Catherine is initially upset but then she becomes intrigued.  She hires a prostitute, Marlène, to assume the role of Bernard’s latest mistress and to tell her every last sordid detail of their illicit liaisons…

Once again, director Anne Fontaine explores the darker side of human sexuality in this polished and most unusual romantic drama.  It is a subject which Fontaine generally handles well, her earlier film Nettoyage à sec (1997) being both a fascinating and provocative example of the genre.  Despite being well-served by an excellent cast – Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Béart give, as ever, near-faultless performances – Nathalie… is far less satisfactory than Fontaine’s previous work.

The main weakness with this film is its narrative, which is hampered by needless repetition which quickly renders the film boring and predictable.  The idea of a character relating her experiences to another character, rather than showing us, is an interesting kind of voyeuristic device, but you can’t help feeling that the idea would work far better in the medium of radio rather than film.

© James Travers 2005

I bought this film blindfold and so remained utterly disappointed after seeing it.  The reasons are that Madame Fontaine did not engage the audience at all.  In brief, the wife discovers through a mobile phone SMS, that the husband is having an affair with another woman.  The wife (Ardant) hires another woman (Béart), a hooker, to seduce the husband and report on her after each "session".  This scenario is not for ordinary people – would a wife who is mad as hell of the affair hire another to exacerbate an act of infidelity?  I don’t think so.  There is nothing wrong with the script per se, but the problem is the actors. 

Emmanuelle Béart is one of my favourite French actresses and Depardieu is a living legend, but their performances are not engaging at all i.e. they are very lame for lack of a better word.  The DVD (French version) cover shows a stripper, and Béart (with apologies) totally failed to convince me she can act the part or she did not actually go to a night club and see exactly how to dance to and amuse the goggling eyes of lusty patrons.  Fanny Ardant saves the day with her superb performance; she is really engaged and disgusted with the affair, though she avenges it in a meaningless way. 

What could have made this movie a hit is the so called "flash backs" between the husband and the supposed mistress – I mean really "heat between the sheets – with weird requests of intimacy to report back to the wife.  For me the non-disclosure of that part made this a forgettable experience and I am thinking of selling my DVD to market sellers.  Even the BIG PUNCH at the end of the film does not salvage the opportunity lost by the director to make this film as memorable as possible.  I once asked a friend, "why do we men cheat on our beautiful wives?" and he responded, "well I guess some men want to experience something new or something that they don’t get from their wives". Well Madame Fontaine failed to give us that – something old but new.  2 stars.

© Thanda Makhathini 2008 (South Africa)

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