Saturday 3 December 2011

Ma Femme est une actrice - My wife is an actress

2001 by Yvan Attal - French movie

How would a husband feel, when his actress wife is looking nude on the screen or when she is doing a sensitive love making scene? This is a very brilliant plot for a movie. And Yvan makes a movie on this topic, with his own wife Charlotte Gainsubourg playing the lead role as his wife Charlotte in the movie. This is Mr. Attal's first full fledged feature film as a director. So here is a man with experience on the topic, writing, directing and acting. That ought to be brilliant right? To make it more interesting the husband is just an ordinary guy, a sports writer, but definitely not a celebrity like his wife.

Most husbands naturally would be annoyed by this and even if they try to be normal they will be easily annoyed if some stupid man wants to discuss with him on this topic. Our husband hardly seem to care about what his wife did in the movies. He was more worried about the lack of peace in their personal life as he had to manage with autograph hunters and photographers all the time. How he starts having problems, after being confronted by a stupid man, with weird questions only the French wont mind asking, is really nicely captured. And his wife has to go to London to act with an old and hot hero.

To a good extent, this movie is really brilliant. We have seen little bits of life behind celebrities in movies like Notting Hill, America's sweethearts. But all those movies did not go really into this topic and was on the periphery mostly. But here Attal does go seriously into many issues that can arise between a husband and wife, when the husband is not a celebrity and the wife is. Add to it the moments when wife has to act in intimate scenes. But I wonder if that was the first time, Charlotte had to act that kind of a scene in her acting life, other than for the kissing scenes about which she explains to him that it was not easy. Because often the husband has to bear people talking about how hot Charlotte is etc, which might not happen if this London movie was the first instance for such a scene. Something was missing clearly in the script, I felt.

For a good 3/4th of this movie, I thought it handled the theme very well. But then, towards the end it just took the path what we would expect of ordinary romantic comedies and it looked pretty ordinary for me. When I say this, I really do not have any idea, what other options Attal had, since he wanted this to have a happy ending. But we know that celebrity marriages always are short lived and he could have lead the movie differently. But may be, he is taking moments from his own life and he must be a happy husband with a celebrity wife. So. But still, some thing was lost in transition in the script.

However, I have to say a good part of the movie is really nice and entertaining too. It can even provoke many questions on the ordinary viewer about what would happen if they were in these kind of situations. And there are some real funny scenes too.

Good performances and Attal deserves a lot of credit for making this movie. If only the end was better.


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