REVIEWED - NATHALIE: The opening scenes of Nathalie... tread territory familiar from many a French movie gabfest - dissecting the emotional problems of the bourgeoisie, writes Michael Dwyer.
Catherine (Fanny Ardant), a middle-aged gynaecologist, has gathered the guests for a surprise party to celebrate the birthday of her businessman husband, Bernard (Gérard Depardieu), when he phones to say he has missed his flight home from Zurich. The next morning, she impulsively listens to the messages on his mobile phone, and her worst suspicions are confirmed when she hears evidence of his adultery. Challenged, he says it was a one-night stand and that it doesn't mean anything.
At this early stage in the film, writer-director Anne Fontaine abruptly breaks with the conventions of the genre and takes the calculated risk of losing anyone in the audience unwilling to summon up the willing suspension of disbelief. Catherine is on her way home from work when, impulsive and curious as ever, she walks into an upmarket brothel and becomes engaged in conversation with the most attractive of the prostitutes, the cool, confident Marlene (Emmanuelle Béart).
It soon becomes clear that Marlene shares Bertrand's attitude to casual sex. "When I'm working, my mind's a blank," she tells Catherine, who is deeply intrigued and devises a plan whereby Marlene will pose as a student named Nathalie and seduce Bernard at Catherine's expense, reporting back to her on what happens between them.
In subsequent meetings, Marlene describes in graphic detail her sexual activity with Bernard. "You reel it off so whorishly," says Catherine, as if she were not fascinated, to which Marlene retorts, "What's wrong with whores?" Catherine, clearly, is a physician who cannot heal herself.
In a film dealing with characters manipulating each other, Fontaine slyly engages in manipulating the viewer, who is observing Marlene's role as a sexual surrogate for Catherine in her own marriage. Fontaine underestimates her audience, however, apparently unaware that they may well be several steps ahead of her as the narrative untangles and the movie's initially intriguing quality dissipates.
Nathalie... is neither as substantial nor as involving as Fontaine's previous film, How I Killed My Father, although it is handsomely framed in widescreen compositions, accompanied by a moody Michael Nyman score, and anchored in the striking screen presence of its acting divas, Ardant and Béart. Michael Dwyer
