Film

Ma femme est une actrice (2001)

Director: Yvan Attal

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Journalist Yvan (Attal) grows jealous when a London shoot requires his actress wife Charlotte (Gainsbourg) to strip naked with suave co-star John (Stamp). No sooner has she left Paris than he's backwards and forwards being a pest and starting fights on Eurostar. Just because he's paranoid, it doesn't mean she hasn't been tempted - though it's more self-fulfilling prophecy than the torrid affair he fears, especially after he takes an acting class, where he fancies another student. On the plus side, it's warm, fresh and often funny (the film-within-the-film that's causing all the fuss looks more like a third-rate soap). Attal cuts a suitably catty and ridiculous figure driving the charming Gainsbourg (his real wife) to distraction; negotiating a minefield, they make a sympathetic pair. On the minus side, the director seems bound by genre demands when you suspect he'd rather wander off leash. He's at his best freewheeling, but a well-observed subplot (Yvan's pregnant Jewish sister argues constantly with her husband, who's against circumcision) is awkwardly integrated, while Charlotte's affair (even as a desultory fling born of circumstance) is unpersuasive.There's more right than wrong, though. With lots of love for life in general, and Gainsbourg in particular, it's a touching billet doux.

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