Nathalie… (2003) Movie Review & Film summary, Cast

Might have been more accurately called Yet Another Film About Parisian Bourgeoisie Fucking Around. People with excessive disposable income trip over each-other’s repressions and do strange things to deal with it. In this case Gerard Depardieu plays an editor – I think he’s an editor, I saw him scribbling on papers with a pen at one point – has a casual fling because he and his wife (Fanny Ardant) can barely connect physically anymore. Ardant is mature in her reaction – that is, she goes off and makes her not-quite-smiling, not-quite-wincing face she’s good at (and which Marion Cotillard’s inherited), and decides against cracking the china over Gerard’s head and booting him out. To get into her husband’s head, or to provide him with more of what she can’t give, or something or other, she goes into a brothe- er, club, and hires the skinniest, willowy-est blonde she can find, being Emmanuelle Beart. She pays Beart to strike up a relationship with Gerard and have an affair with him, and then relay the details. Mutually fascinated, the two women become closer and closer and closer…thus relentlessly teasing with crypto-Sapphic tension. But never fear, folks, this film is all about sex in the head. Anyway it all turns out Beart takes the money and makes up the stories about Gerard, which allows husband and wife to reunite happily and Beart gets to go back to morosely sucking cock for cash. Fab!