Customer Reviews

My Wife Is an Actress [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really enjoyed this film. The story itself was nothing extraordinary, but it embodied the lovely sensitivity of French cinema. I liked it because it gave me a glance of French or European film industry that was so different from the glittery Hollywood. The actress in the film was portrayed as a real, sensible and normal person. I also realized after watching the film that the main characters were a real life couple and the husband was the director, which added another interesting layer to it. They did not even change their names in the film! I really liked the human qualities of this kind of production in comparison to the manufactured qualities of many commercial films. I felt that it was a collaboration of a group of young people whom were working with a modest budget. However, they have done a great job with the limited resources because they had something to say and they knew how to say it well. It was really about making art than making a product.

"My Wife is an Actress" is just a recent example of why the best films that are currently available are coming from overseas instead of from Hollywood. "Amelie", "Autumn Spring", "the Navigators", "Billy Elliot", "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie", "Morvern Callar", "Merci Pour le Chocolat", "Nowhere in Africa", "Y Tu Mama Tambien", and "L'Auberge Espagnole" are all further proof that it is the Europeans whose earnest and creative writing and interesting cinematography are at the cutting edge of today's film industry. This film is driven by Yvan Attal's neuroses which provides a fun glimpse into the daily workings of a sort-of-true-to-life celebrity couple. The screenplay is a lot of fun, and the film maintains a sort of self-deprecating humor and simultaneously energy that is a lot of fun to watch. It is especially humorous when you consider the marriages we have here like "Bennifer", Tom and Nicole/Penelope, and Britney's new marriage/annulment. I find it interesting that so many people are fascinated by real-life dysfunctional relationships in Hollywood, but when two celebrities attempt to make a film poking fun at their own problems, people disregard it. "My Wife is An Actress" is a fun and enjoyable film, and a great date movie. I would definitely recommend this film to anyone.

What is as intriguing about this film as the film itself is the background of the stars. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the daughter of the (in)famous Serge Gainsbourg, French singer-songwriter of great international cultural influence and English actress, Jane Birkin. Charlotte is married to her co-star, Yvan Attal, and the screenplay has its roots in their actual life--Yvan's difficulties in being married to someone recognized everywhere she goes.

While Charlotte isn't a great beauty in the typically American fashion, she has a compelling screen presence that makes her stardom believable. When in London to do a film with Terence Stamp (all the women in this film gush about what a "hottie" he is--and that's simply not believable), husband Yvan's doubts, fears, and jealousy come to full boil.

Stamp turns in a gorgeous performance as the archetypal self-involved, always-out-to-impress-the-little-people British actor--wowing the women (while just a bit tipsy) with quotes from plays and poetry. And Charlotte is credibly drawn to him, simply because he is an actor; she needn't justify her existence as a performer.

There are some truly funny scenes, especially with Yvan's pregnant sister and her husband who are in a seemingly endless battle over whether or not to circumcise their child. Like Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Yvan's sister has a lot of prickly reactions to the issue of Jewishness (she and Yvan are Jewish, neither of them have Jewish partners.)

This is a low-key film with some lovely moments, a fair bit of underlying truth about the illusory aspects of stardom, and fine performances across the board.
Highly recommended.

A thoroughly enjoyable and low-key French comedy featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of avant-pop musician Serge Gainsbourg) and her real-life husband, actor-director Yvan Attal, as a young couple whose marriage is going through a rough patch. She is (get this...) "Charlotte," an actress who is a national celebrity, recognized and stopped on the street by autograph seekers and well-wishers, and he is Yvan, her more pedestrian hubby, a simple sports writer who finds himself increasingly irritated by and jealous of the demands of her profession. Terrance Stamp is slightly miscast as Charlotte's British co-star an aging film idol whose sex appeal piques Yvan's suspicions (Stamp is a little too unappealing and plays his character too broadly), but on the whole, this is a very funny, very human comic drama. Worth checking out!

Ok, my subject was just a remark on what the other two reviewers (at the time I wrote this review) wrote. This film really isn't that bad. Maybe it helped that I didn't know Yvan Attal's real life is a basis for the movie's plot, and that Charlotte Gainsbourgh is in real life Attal's wife. I must admit that the whole crux of the story, Yvan's jealousy of Charlotte and John, is about as stable as a house built with a deck of cards. It all starts with a stranger pressing Yvan with questions on what it's like being married to such a celebrity. The plot is quite juvenile, but this is a French film! It's bound to contain something je ne se quois -- weird.

I personally found this film to have several memorable scenes and I really liked the lighthearted tone taken by the film. It's no Amelie, but the acting as well as the Paris scenery were great!

LEAP rating (each out of 5):
============================
L (Language) - 4 (accurately subtitled)
E (Erotica) - 3.5 (full male/female frontal shots)
A (Action) - 0 (n/a)
P (Plot) - 3 (simple tale of actress' husband getting jealous)

In this first movie directed under his camera, Yvan Attal has pleasure showing how his character (Yvan) and and his wife (Charlotte), famous actress shooting a movie in London, are having difficulties in their relationship as Yvan believes that she is having an extramarital relationship with a very seducing British actor.

Although I think the movie dragged a bit at the beginning and at the middle of the movie, and that certain characters and situations could have been further developed (ex: Yvan`s female colleague who keeps turning around him, Ludivine Sagnier`s character who falls in love with him), I had a lot of pleasure watching this story. As we look at the movie, it is evident that Yvan Attal knows how to direct actors, since they add to their characters an energy and intensity that makes them believable.

Thanks to this movie, I am now impatient to watch his next work: "And they lived happily ever after" and his contribution in "New York I love you".

Another French movie -- I find that a good French comedy is superior to all but one or two of the best American funny movies a year -- directed by Charlotte Gainsbough's husband, about a man who is married to the gorgeous actress Charlotte Gainsborough. Slightly *less* sexy than expected, but a lot of fun.

Funny movie about a man, Yvan Atal, who is married to a famous movie star played by Charlotte Gainsbourgh. He gets jealous when she has to film a nude love scene in a film being made in London with an English actor played by Terence Stamp. Yvan and Charlotte are a real-life couple, and Yvan has made other movies with the theme of his jealously of his wife. This one is more humorous than the others.

Yes, this film is "lightweight", but the soundtrack is very, very good. It's definitely worth watching.

Yvan Attal, the French Woody Allen? Maybe. What's wrong with this film? Well, it doesn't amount to much. It's frivolous and unimportant. It needs a little Allen sermonizing on love and life to put a heart in the center of it's romantic spirit. What's right with this film? It's an engaging superficial comedic collage viewed as one would a not-very-deep but pleasing French painting of, say, summer people with parasols on a beach, or maybe a bird in a cage looking out the window to a beautiful morning while a lady with grey hair knits nearby. Suffice to say, I love this film. Director, writer and star Yvan Attal, who casts his real life wife, Charlotte Gainsbourg opposite him, is a comedic marvel, like a juggling, dancing all purpose clown at center stage of the circus refusing to let our eyes wander, as his ordinary life begins to unravel when he suddenly discovers a jealous streak towards his wife's romantic celebrity status. That is the thrust of the plot, but it all keeps rolling along in big, and little and sometimes contrived funny bits that pay off well.