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My Wife Is an Actress

My Wife Is an Actress

List Price: $29.95
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: i love Charlotte Gainsbourg
Review: This movie is somewhat enjoyable, but nothing great. However, Charlotte Gainsbourg is uniquely beautiful and capitivating, and steals the movie and my heart. Worth seeing, just for her.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: My Watch Was More Interesting.
Review: This romantic comedy was amusing at first, but quickly lost its steam. The main problem is there really isn't much of a story. All the acting is great, but they just didn't spend enough time developing the script. It's literally: guy struggles with successful wife, they have a spat, they get back together.

I was starting to get movie seat (the polite term) when I looked at my watch and discovered only 45 minutes had past. From there, it was a pure grind getting through the film so as not to offend my girlfreind. Yes, that's what it's come to.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Charmingly amusing
Review: 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.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY PEOPLE
Review: 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.


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