My Wife Is an Actress Movie Review

Is it weird when reality and fictional cinema intersect? For example: Kidman and Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Basinger and Baldwin in The Getaway, or The Blair Witch Project. Those movies are nothing compared to the abysmally titled My Wife Is an Actress, which totally blurs the line between what is real and what is not and crosses into a strange mélange of melodramatic kookiness and Method acting taken to the nth degree.

The movie is a personal exploration into the limitations and expectations of fidelity. The film is penned and directed by the notable French actor Yvan Attal (The Criminal), who is married to a famous French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg (The Cement Garden), and both star in the film.

The plot revolves around Yvan (Attal), a successful sports writer madly in love and married to a popular movie star named Charlotte (Gainsbourg). The problem is that everyone in Paris seems to be madly in love with her as well. Following an endless stream of autograph seekers, strangers ogling her, and requests for group photographs –Yvan’s neurosis and male hysteria start to rise. When Charlotte undertakes a new role opposite the silken smooth Brit movie star John (Terence Stamp) in a new romantic drama in London, Yvan’s jealousy reaches full tilt, swinging him back and forth in irrational actions that would make Woody Allen blush.

Attal’s directorial debut sparks with life in its first two acts but finally descends into murky waters of unresolved actions and emotional choices. The subtle camera movements and lighting capture both parties in flux. Despite decent performances by Attal and Gainsbourg, the star of the show is Terence Stamp. His take on the somewhat one-dimensional actor character of John sparks with cold desperation of an aging and fading movie star no longer passionate about his work, suffering from his own ruined marriage and martyrdom.

Even when Attal tosses in a few acts of serendipity and passion, the movie feels canned and empty. The homogenized and trite ending leads only to further questions concerning the power of love and its place in the act of marriage, and I left the theater more confused than enlightened.

Aka Ma femme est une actrice.

Sorry, your wife is an exhibitionist.