THEATER
• King of Shadows
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Oh What War
• Three Changes
• 4 Adults Only
FILM
• The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival
• Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
Q&A
• 'Grey' Area
A health expert turned filmmaker makes his East Coast premiere
CULTURE VULTURE
• Culture Vulture

Gabrielle
Directed by Patrice Chéreau

Review by Ethan Alter

It's nice to take a break from summer blockbuster spectacles to watch a small chamber piece where the only action comes from dramatic confrontations between well-defined characters. Unfortunately, if those characters turn out to be dull, there’s nothing left to occupy your attention. Such is the case with "Gabrielle," an overly claustrophobic period drama from Patrice Chéreau, the director behind art-house favorites like "Queen Margot" and "Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train." Based on a short story by Joseph Conrad, the film details the final days of a seemingly happy marriage between two well-to-do French socialites, Jean and Gabrielle Harvey (played by Pascal Greggory and Isabelle Huppert). A cheerfully superficial man, Jean believes that his relationship with Gabrielle is rock solid, despite the fact that they sleep in separate bedrooms and rarely converse outside of their weekly dinner parties. So imagine his surprise when he arrives home one afternoon and finds a "Dear Jean" letter from his wife, essentially declaring that their marriage is over. The situation is made doubly awkward when Gabrielle walks through the front door, having decided not to leave her husband after all. But the damage is done, and over the course of one long evening, the two drag out every skeleton in their rather large closet until reconciliation seems virtually impossible.

The way we weren't: Pascal Greggory finds out that it's not such a happy marriage after all in Patrice Cherau's new drama "Gabrielle."

The premise sets the stage for a wrenching tale of marital discord a lá Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but "Gabrielle" is strangely emotionless. That's not really the fault of Greggory or Huppert, both of whom seem ready and willing to go for the dramatic jugular needed to create an effective tale of lost love. Rather it's their director who puts a damper on the proceedings, strangling the life out of the movie with unnecessary touches, like the random switching between black-and-white and color film or the superimposing of text over the action. Chéreau seems eager to emphasize artifice over reality, even in the way he directs his actors. The result is that neither Gabrielle nor Jean come across as real people, even though they are wrestling with very real problems. By the end of "Gabrielle," we're rooting for the couple to break up just so we don't have to spend another minute in their company.