Gabrielle | DVD Review

It is commonplace in period film to see the rich and privileged of centuries past aware of their status and insistent on maintaining their lifestyle and its appearance to those existing comfortably in the same circles. What is less common is to see how this need to uphold their unnecessarily extravagant standard of living is a desperate attempt to validate their lives as fulfilling, as meaningful, as a success. In French director, Patrice Chereau’s GABRIELLE, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Le Retour”, a woman makes a decision that will change the course of her life, as well as her husband’s, but recants this decision within hours with hopes that they can both somehow continue their existence as before. Pascal Greggory plays Jean, a successful businessman who introduces himself through narration as a man in good health and good form. He lists his acquisitions, his exquisitely furnished home, his moderate but still sizable wealth, even his beautiful, well-spoken wife, as his life’s greatest accomplishments. He is a proficient man who has mastered the game of life, exuding an elevated level of control that allows him to believe he has the whole thing beat. This is of course until the day his wife, Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert), leaves a note for him to find upon his return from work. The note announces that she has left him for another man. The spontaneity of her decision disrupts the logic that he has always lived his life according to. In the midst of his unnerving panic, Gabrielle returns. Subsequently, the two are forced to face the limitations of their lives and marriage through a series of conversations that reveal to both characters what they are capable of living with and what they are not willing to live without.

Chereau applied a strict formalist approach to GABRIELLE. The film is shot in Cinemascope, allowing for beautifully wide shots of the rich and colourful home this couple shares. In the thirty minutes of interview footage included in the DVD extras, Chereau goes into great detail about how they came to choose a home that would serve as both a fine backdrop as well as a stifling prison for Jean and Gabrielle. He wanted to make a point of making his aesthetic choices known rather than leave them to subtlety. He discusses the score, the usage of black and white, the amalgamation of the language of the time with a contemporary influence. Huppert and Gregorry are also interviewed about the process, about each other, about their interpretation of the finished product. Combined, all three insights add more texture to an already well-nuanced film.

The DVD’s only other feature is the inclusion of three deleted scenes. The first two, shown fully constructed but not corrected, were extended portions of sequences that made the final cut. Each scene is introduced by the director who explains the reason for the trimming as a means of simplifying an already complex text. The third scene was included on the DVD to appease the director’s pride. It too is an extended version of a sequence that was ultimately included in the film but the director felt the nature of the shot did not fit at the time it was meant to be included. Regardless, the technical mastery of the four-minute continuous shot was something that Chereau felt to be an accomplishment unto itself despite its lack of purpose.

GABRIELLE is dramatic and exaggerated but at the same time it is delicate and telling. Its dense visual depth and eruptive performances of people unraveling before us, themselves and each other, is provocative and painful. As they are forced to see life for what it is and not what they worked so hard to make it out to be, it is always unclear as to whether they are capable of hearing each other or learning to live in an unaccustomed fashion. In that, the unpredictability of their lives seeps into the very trajectory of the film making it just as unexpected.

Movie rating – 4

Disc Rating – 3