Le Divorce Details

This romantic comedy drama from director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant is a more contemporary work than the pair's customary period excursions. However, although it's still about civilised manners and mores, this convoluted yet entertaining look at French and American sexual attitudes lacks the sophistication of Howards End and A Room with a View. Complications arise when Isabel (Kate Hudson) arrives in Paris just as her pregnant stepsister Roxeanne (Naomi Watts) is deserted by husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud). Isabel then starts an affair with his uncle (Thierry Lhermitte). Glenn Close contributes to the proceedings as an expatriate American writer and Leslie Caron has a callously disapproving eye for everyone. The upshot of this clash of characters is that the French do not expect their romances to be permanent, and Americans do. All in all, Merchant Ivory's regular screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has worked Diane Johnson's source novel into rather cumbersome shape with some satisfying moments but too little depth. Fans of Merchant Ivory films will have to settle for this failed fix until a better movie comes along.

Dull adaptation of a waspish novel about the perfidious French.