Product Description

Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) lights up the screen as Isabel, a film school dropout who jets off to Paris when her pregant step-sister Roxy (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive) is abandoned by her husband. Soon, Isabel has a scandal of her own when she falls for an older man who's related to Roxy's cheating husband! Ths stylish romantic comedy by the acclaimed Merchant Ivory team (The Remains of the Day) features a top cast, including Stockard Channing, Glenn Close, Matthew Modine and Bebe Newirth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13967 in DVD
• Brand: TCFHE
• Released on: 2004-01-27
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.com
The cinematic team of Merchant Ivory (Howard's End, The Remains of the Day) leaves corsets behind for the contemporary world of Americans in Paris. The day Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days) comes to visit her pregnant sister Roxy (Naomi Watts, Mullholland Drive) is the day Roxy's French husband leaves her. The divorce proceedings end up centering around a painting, long owned by the Walkers, that the husband's family would like to claim--but their maneuverings are complicated when Isabel begins an affair with a diplomat (Thierry Lhermitte, The Closet) who just happens to be Roxy's uncle-in-law. At its best moments, Le Divorce has the feel of one of Woody Allen's serio-comic films like Hannah and Her Sisters, and there's a genuinely suspenseful climactic scene on the Eiffel Tower. Also featuring Leslie Caron, Glenn Close, Matthew Modine, Stephen Fry, Sam Waterston, and Stockard Channing. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
A Merchant-Ivory movie set in the present, which makes for a change. This one is the tale of two sisters: Isabel (Kate Hudson), who flies to Paris to visit her sister Roxy (Naomi Watts), who has married a dodgy Frenchman. Cue any number of cross-cultural collisions, as our hopeful young Americans-today's Daisy Millers-become ensnared in the oily grasp of old Europe. Isabel finds herself in bed with Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte), who has the decency to look faintly embarrassed about it. The movie contemplates sex, as well as abortion, suicide, and mental instability, but the director, James Ivory, seems fatally undecided as to whether such matters are worthy of solemn consideration or mere backdrops to a bit of fun. The moral of the piece, finally, appears to be "Don't marry out of your tribe," which is nice to know in these days of international suspicion. Wasted actors include Stockard Channing, Sam Waterston, Bebe Neuwirth, Glenn Close, and Matthew Modine; that's a lot of waste. Leslie Caron offers as pure a definition of grande dame as you are likely to find. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

For French style lovers only
If you are fond of linear plots in which one event leads to another and the whole leads to a more or less apparent conclusion, "Le divorce" is not likely to make much of an impression on you. It is not even one of those typical Merchant Ivory films which hark back nostalgically to Victorian England or the times of the Raj. "Le divorce" is something like a voyeur peep into the life of two families, one upper-crust French, the other high-brow American which are bound together by the couple whose marriage is drifting apart. The plot has not enough dramatic flair as to have been made into a film, if plot were the only thing to account for to define a film as a work of art, but it has plenty of charm if, like me, you are partial to Paris. For those who love French lifestyle the film will prove delicious: superb decors, shots in Café Flore, the understated stardom of a plush Hermès Kelly bag and Leslie Caron's appearance as the embodiment of French chic and cartesian rationale...all these will appeal to you. Glenn Close is also breathtaking as ever as the American writer who after years of living in Paris has impeccably assimilated the best of both cultures. This is not a film for a rainy day and less so for people who look for entertainment of jaded senses. This is a hedonistic film for the dilettanti, the bon-vivant, to be savoured slowly like a good vintage bordeaux.

Excellent
For those who do not understand French film making this movie may not be exciting but for those of us who understand this is an excellent movie that speaks to the way the French treat relationships and marriage. Some may think that it is misogynistic ---far from it though it is just a very real presentation of the French way of doing things that happens to include a few american girls whose inclusion brings cultural differences into sharp focus.

Le Boring
I won't speak for the book because I haven't read it, and I'm not French. If I was French, however, I imagine that I might feel insulted. The movie seems to scream at the viewer that the French are evil, gauche, and utterly frivolous, while Americans are victims, innocent and pure. While neither can be the case, it is ridiculous to taut such views.

The characters in the movie as well as their interactions, comings and goings make no sense. No one has a reason for doing what they do or going where they go. Kate Hudson's character falls in love with two men that she barely knows and is in no way a support to her sister whose French husband mysteriously runs off with a Russian woman. The evil French husband then does all he can to be utterly unfair to poor Roxy (his wife). He wants to take her children, her family's painting, ie everything he can for reasons that the movie does not go into.

What bothers me more than ridiculous people doing ridiculous things for ridiculous reasons is when movie writers have cardboard cutout people do ridiculous things for reasons that are kept hidden from us. From the scene where Kate Hudson gets a strange haircut for seemingly no reason, I simply lost interest in the story.

Also, the writers were trying to elicit emotions where their wasn't sufficient development for there to be any. Examples were the murder of the cheating husband and his girlfriend, the selling of the painting, the suicide of Roxy, the mad gun battle on the Eiffel Tower, etc. Need I go on? Save your time and your money.