Speak to Me of Love

Openly inspired by the end of her own marriage to Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, Marceau's directorial debut is in many ways your standard French relationships movie. Mother-of-three Justine (Godrèche) finds herself increasingly alienated from her foreign husband of 15 years Richard (Arestrup), who puts his struggling career as a writer and librettist ahead of his share of the parenting and develops a nagging paranoia about his wife's fidelity. They finally separate around the halfway mark and both find themselves feeling bereft. That's pretty much it, which means that Richard's foray to Barcelona to work on a doomed modern opera and Justine's excursion with the kids to visit grandparents in the countryside register as little more than ways of padding the running time. Impeccably naturalistic and (of course) very well acted, it's not moving or extraordinary enough to generate more than a shrug.