28
Feb/14

PATRICE CHÉREAU — THE LOVE THAT DARES: GABRIELLE

28
Feb/14
Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) reevaluates her life with her husband in Patrice Chereau drama

Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert) reevaluates her life with her husband (Pascal Greggory) in exquisite Chéreau drama

GABRIELLE (Patrice Chéreau, 2005)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Aves.
Sunday, March 2, 3:20
Series runs February 28 – March 5
212-875-5600
www.filmlinc.com

Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory) thinks he has the perfect life. He is a wealthy businessman with a beautiful home and a gorgeous wife, Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert). At their fancy Thursday-night dinner parties, he gets to show off everything he has to all the right people. But then one day he comes home from work to find a letter waiting for him: Gabrielle has left him for another man. Suddenly his carefully constructed world — including a sexless marriage and servants who dress and undress him — comes tumbling down in an instant, only to be turned upside down again when Gabrielle immediately returns, having changed her mind, but not necessarily for the most loving of reasons. For the rest of the film, Greggory and Huppert act up a storm as they try to deal with the tragic consequences both publicly and privately. Based on the Joseph Conrad short story “The Return,” Gabrielle is a powerful, gripping turn-of-the-century drama that is staged theatrically by director and cowriter Patrice Chéreau, who knows how to get inside his characters (see Intimacy, Queen Margot, or The Wounded Man). While Hervey delivers monotone voice-over monologues in black-and-white, the more lively Gabrielle is depicted in color, her red hair a striking contrast to her bland, brown-gray husband. Most of the film takes place within the confines of their fabulous home, which becomes more and more like a prison as they fight for survival. A stunning achievement — though not an easy film to watch — Gabrielle is screening March 2 at 3:20 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Patrice Chéreau: The Love That Dares,” which pays tribute to the stage and film director, who passed away in October at the age of sixty-eight. The festival continues through March 5 with such other Chéreau works as Intimacy, Queen Margot, The Flesh of the Orchid, and The Wounded Man.