***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras N/A
starring Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory, Claudia Coli, Thierry Hancisse
screenplay by Patrice Chéreau & Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the novel The Return by Joseph Conrad
directed by Patrice Chéreau
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's official: the heritage movie is dead. Long the bane of young rowdies and middlebrow-haters the world over, the form breathed its last breaths earlier this century following a couple of decades of uncritical support. Witness Patrice Chéreau's outstanding literary adaptation Gabrielle, which manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre while simultaneously critiquing its lesser examples. There is no comfort to be had in well-appointed houses or the tasteful appreciation of "the arts"–only, after Joseph Conrad's The Return, a vain and selfish man who uses such accoutrements for his self-aggrandizement. The film snatches away the cheap pleasures of heritage, blowing up its shallow comforts and rocking you in ways a mere "period piece" never could.
Jean (Pascal Greggory) is a puffed-up bourgie who pontificates in an obnoxious voiceover. He's proud of his meticulously-culled group of friends, his popular and satisfying dinner parties, and, of course, his wife of ten years, Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert), whom he gloats over like "a collector values his prized possession." We're consequently delighted to see him destroyed by a Dear John letter from Gabrielle that has him shattering glass and accidentally cutting himself. Of course, he's perplexed when she promptly returns in the hopes of retracting her missive, leading to a tête-à-tête that lasts the night and spills over into one of their blessed shindigs.
Right off the bat, the film sets you up for a moneyed letdown. In another context, Jean would be an unambiguous hero having comfortable torment over a romantic tragedy, but Chéreau has primed us that the background in which he luxuriates is about to be zapped. Indeed, Jean's fawning over his social set and smug reduction of women to property are exactly the things at which we must whittle away, making Gabrielle's puncturing a necessary act. After all of Jean's babbling, the film then dwindles into some of the most astoundingly nuanced writing (by Chéreau and Anne-Louise Trividic) ever to grace the genre: not only do husband and wife duke it out, but Gabrielle also has an encounter with panicked servant Yvonne (Claudia Coli) that further muddies the waters. It's best to enter the movie unaware of what goes on in said exchanges; I wouldn't want to ruin the best parts.
Suffice it to say, the director is just as brutal on the aesthetic level, laying waste to the gentle fluidity that is the heritage genre's stock and trade. Instead of indulging in unbroken streams of antiques and costumes, Chéreau jars you with aesthetic shifts: he changes stocks from tinted black-and-white to colour, slaps you in the face with enormous Godardian intertitles, and uses speedy tracking shots that hurtle past the standard-issue objects of desire. The camera is often crammed in the faces of the actors, or recording the skittering, frightened servants as they run to support them. (Like the dialogue, it's an emotional scrimmage that's as languid or brutal as the moment requires.) Watching it a second time, I was amazed at the nuances–in pictures and words–that I had missed the first time around; Gabrielle rewards repeated viewings as it does the patient viewer. So mourn not at the corpse of Heritage, for a better sort of adaptation has risen to take its place.
Seville presents Gabrielle on a Canadian import DVD through Warner Home Video in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image is exceedingly filmlike (that is, pleasantly grainy and lacking in edge-enhancement), though some flat shadow detail gums up a few of the (many) scenes that unfurl in darkness. While the French Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is quite good when it's got something (music, party chatter) to pass through the surround speakers, mostly it's sharp when our heroes are talking and quiet in those rare moments where nothing's being said. There is a commentary track with Chéreau and Trividic as well as talking-heads with Chéreau, Huppert, and Greggory, but though the film has optional English subtitles, the special features do not.
90 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); French DD 5.1; English (optional) subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Seville
