Kate Hudson is 'Le Divorce's' only saving grace

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

LE DIVORCE (PG-13) Two-and-a-Half Stars (Fair-to-Good) An uneven and overstuffed comedy of manners, depicting the differing attitudes on romance, marriage and divorce between Americans and Parisians. Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts play sisters embroiled in affairs of the heart in modern France. James Ivory directs. Fox Searchlight, 118 minutes.

So says the philandering husband's French mother in "Le Divorce," a new comedy-drama with two American sisters (Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts) embroiled in a very Parisian divorce case.

If you're familiar with the collected works of Merchant Ivory — producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory — you'll be surprised to see their names attached to this light but overstuffed confection.

They've made their reputation mostly with period dramas of a strong literary bent, usually set in England. Their "A" list includes "Room with a View," "Remains of the Day" and "Howard's End." So, to find bubbly Hudson and the more somber Watts tripping through romantic difficulties in modern Paris might not compute.

And yet, this new film is a comedy of manners, and Merchant Ivory has almost always been about manners. "Le Divorce" is an adaptation of Diane Johnson's novel that puts the two young women with a naturally American outlook on love and sex in opposition to peculiarly French attitudes about matters of the heart.

Isabel (Hudson) arrives in Paris to take a job as an assistant to a prominent American writer (Glenn Close) and to visit her sister, Roxeanne (Watts). Isabel's timing couldn't be worse. As she steps into the upstairs flat, Roxeanne's husband rushes past. He's in the midst of leaving Roxeanne, despite the woman's current pregnancy. The husband, Charles-Henri de Persand, is running off with a performance artist named Magda.

That leaves Isabel with the task of buoying up her sister. But she also becomes part of a social circle that, strangely enough, continues to include de Persand's family, Roxeanne's very French in-laws.

Weekend breakfasts at the de Persands continue as if nothing's amiss, a reflection of the ease with which the French approach divorce. The family's matriarch, Suzanne, presides with regal propriety (conveyed through the casting of the elegant Leslie Caron.) Affairs are also to be expected; in fact, as unlikely as it may seem, Isabel is soon hopping in bed with the considerably older Edgar Cosset (Thierry Lhermitte), Suzanne's debonair brother.

The collapse of one sister's marriage and the startup of the other's affair would seem enough to fill any movie. Unfortunately, the writers feel obligated to jam in too many subplots and supporting characters from Johnson's novel.

For example: On the wall in Roxeanne's apartment is a painting from an Old Master that may be very valuable. It's on loan to Roxeanne from her American family but the de Persands unbelievably think they're entitled to half its value through marriage. A legal battle ensues. Roxeanne's family arrives on a vacation that's as ill-timed as Isabel's visit. The parents are played by Sam Waterson and Stockard Channing, whose talents are largely wasted in these superfluous roles. And even worse, Matthew Modine shows up as Magda's jilted husband, a gun-toting loose cannon who supplies some faux tension in the film's final reel. Poor Modine is saddled with the film's worst dialogue, including the memorable "What would you do if someone tried to take your puppy away?"

Despite these major miscues, "Le Divorce" is often amusing, thanks largely to the effervescent Hudson, the Parisian locales and the film's humorous references to the oil-and-water differences between the French and the Americans. I only wish Merchant Ivory hadn't tried to jam so many ingredients into this dish. A souffle like "Le Divorce" should be kept simple and light.

Rated PG-13, with profanity, implied sex, innuendo.