April 03, 2003
Ma femme est une actrice
Last night we watched Ma femme est une actrice (My wife is an actress), a cute little self-referential French romantic comedy.
Yvan is sports writer who never seems to actually work (played by Yvan Attal who wrote and directed the film). Yvan is married to, yes, an actress who is known throughout the film simply as Charlotte (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, Attal's real-life spouse, and a well-known French actress.) There's also an understated performance by Terence Stamp as Charlotte's leading man in the film within the film.
The film circles around the issues Yvan has with Charlotte's life in the cinema. It's funny and sweet. Sort of a cross between Nora Ephron, writer of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In Seattle, and Nick Hornby who wrote the novels that were turned into the movies High Fidelity and About A Boy. (Hornby also wrote the book Fever Pitch (also a film) about a rabid fan of Arsenal, a football team. In the deleted scenes on the DVD of Ma femme..., there is a very long scene of Attal riding around in a London taxi. At one point he's making small talk with the driver who mentions being a fan of Arsenal. We wouldn't have had a clue what he was talking about had we not seen Fever Pitch.)
The DVD features are basic. A bunch of trailers (which is actually kind of unusual on DVDs for some reason. I personally like having a bunch of trailers on the disk. Always looking for more movies to watch, don't you know.), a short not-very-informative making-of featurette, a few (rightly) deleted scenes (outtakes, really), and a director's commentary (which we didn't screen).
Verdict: 2-1/2 stars (out of 4)
Posted by jeffy at April 3, 2003 09:55 PM