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MY WIFE IS AN ACTRESS Send This Review to a Friend
Although its central jealousy joke is stretched beyond the breaking point, "My Wife Is An Actress" contains one sidesplitting scene that is one of the funniest in memory about the process of filmmaking. Too bad the rest doesn't measure up.
Charlotte Gainsbourg as the actress Charlotte has a fit of anger at what she perceives as a director's horny desire to see her naked in shooting a scene. She is furious and asserts that she'll be naked when everyone else strips too. Cut to a scene in which her challenge is met, as the set is filled with an uproariously funny melange of naked crew bodies, male and female. As funny as the moment is, it is the set up for what comes next.
Charlotte's husband, sports writer Yvan (Yvan Attal, also the writer-director of "My Wife Is an Actress), is already obsessively jealous of Charlotte's love scenes with actors. He decides to visit the set an in he walks on this nudist extravaganza. (Not so incidentally, Attal and Gainsbourg are husband and wife in real life.)
For all its comic efforts, however, the film, which was showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival 2000 and the New Films/ New Directors series of MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, becomes labored with Yvan's silly obsessing over his wife's work opposite actors. There is at least some reason for worry when she plays opposite the seductive star John, suavely portrayed by Terence Stamp. But how far can such a plot go? Intended charm gives way to unintended tedium at what basically comes down to an in-joke for those who work in cinema. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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