Le Divorce, Movie Review: Times Network Options

[Pradeep]

Cast: Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts
Direction: James Ivory

Here's an uneasy cross between a comedy of manners and generationgap romance, from the Merchant-Ivory team, set in Paris. Disappointingly, Le Divorce lacks grace, insight or any semblance of artistry.

Adapted from the best-selling novel by Diane Johnson, the screenplay coauthored by the director?s longtime collaborator, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, unfortunately amounts to a wishywashy account of two American sisters whose Parisian reunion is thrown into disarray by domestic crises.

The older sister (Watts) has been dumped by her husband right in the middle of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, her flighty sibling (Hudson), who has barely arrived from California, races into an affair with a married French diplomat. Moreover, the messed-up sisters get into a legal dispute over a priceless painting belonging to their family. Predictably, the femmes trip and tumble towards an all's-well-that-concludes-well climax.

The clash between American and Gallic traditions does generate a few moments of emotional frisson. Practically all the characters are one-dimensional and their non-stop banter is strictly tiresome. The production values are glossy but that?s about it. As the sisters, Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson are quite ineffectual. In supporting roles, old timers Leslie Caron as a snooty French matriarch, Stockard Channing as a nonchalant American parent, and Glenn Close as an expatriate poet, are far more impressive. As for Matthew Modine, he is thoroughly ill-at-ease I the minuscule role of a cuckolded husband.