Le Divorce

Based on the 1997 National Book Award-nominated novel of the same name by Diane Johnson (co-writer of the script for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining), Le Divorce is a romantic comedy from director James Ivory. Revisiting the "Americans in France" theme that Ivory explored in 1998's A Soldier's ...more

No wonder anti-France sentiments run so high in America. Le Divorce doesn't do much to inspire American support for France. The opposite is probably true, thanks to the whiny characters that populate this farce. In LeDivorce, Naomi Watts is Roxy an American expatriate, living, writing poetry, and giving birth in France with her sleazy French hubby. He leaves her for another woman, smack dab in the middle of another pregnancy, so her sister Isabel, played by Kate Hudson heads abroad to offer ...more

There are some mild attempts at social commentary in Le Divorce, but the film is too lightweight to qualify as a serious drama. It's also too tastefully genteel for biting social satire and the characters aren't sufficiently well developed for gripping drama, despite some melodramatic (and contrived) plot developments. Kate Hudson doesn't manage to flesh out Isabel Walker to make her seem multi-layered or even particularly engaging, and the film doesn't make much effort to get inside her head, ...more