"Happily Ever After"

This French movie about adultery captures the intoxicating -- and terrifyingly complex -- essence of marriage.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Apr 8, 2005 | Any movie about infidelity should automatically be about marriage -- and yet so few of them are. Because adultery is part of its subject (though not the whole of it), the extraordinary "Happily Ever After," from the French actor, director and writer Yvan Attal (he made the 2002 "My Wife Is an Actress"), is in danger of being perceived as one of those drolly dull French bedroom comedies, the kind of thing that cultured American audiences used to flock to in the '70s. You could always count on the French to give you lots of mixing and matching, coupling and recoupling, and we Americans would look on, tittering with polite amusement as if we were watching a Pepé Le Pew cartoon. "Those French, they know from adultery!" was always the subtext, one we enjoyed mightily, at least as a diversion from the strain and heartbreak of making our own marriages work.

Maybe the French do know from adultery, at least insofar as they're a nation of grown-ups who were baffled that we'd even think of impeaching a president for a minor Oval Office indiscretion. But "Happily Ever After" isn't about cultural differences; it's about the dumb things people do for reasons they don't understand, and the smart things they do sometimes even against their better judgment. And although "Happily Ever After" is ostensibly about adultery -- that is, an instance of adultery provides its dramatic tension -- it's really about marriage, and the unknowability of what makes good ones, as well as seemingly bad ones, work. The picture is neither comedy nor drama but an iridescent blending of the two, like the complex sky of a Turner painting. Is there trouble in that sky, or simply vast, nearly incomprehensible beauty? Or, more confusing still, both at once?

Vincent (Attal) and Gabrielle (Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is Attal's wife in real life) have what looks to be a stable, comfortable marriage. Like many young married couples, they get home from their jobs, spend some time with the kids -- Vincent and Gabrielle have one, a mischievous little monkey named Joseph (played by Attal and Gainsbourgh's real-life son) -- and then sit down to a coffee table laid with a takeout feast. "Happily Ever After" is dappled with those kinds of ordinary details, not to suggest how dull everyday life is, but to magnify its textures. We see another side of Vincent, who sells luxury cars for a living (Gabrielle is a real-estate agent), when he's hanging out with his two closest friends, George (Alain Chabat), who's constantly griping about his wife, Nathalie (Emmanuelle Seigner), and the unmarried Fred (Alain Cohen), a spectacularly average-looking fellow who sleeps with a different beautiful woman practically every night. Vincent and George both roll their eyes at Fred's exploits; their envy is both mock and deeply genuine -- the suggestion is that they don't dare to untangle their feelings into specifics. But while Vincent seems to be the most happily coupled of the three, he's actually having an affair, and not just a fling: He seems to be in love with his mistress (Angie David), although he's careful to make it clear to her that he loves his wife, too.

There are no angry confrontations or tearful confessions in "Happily Ever After" -- Attal is more interested in what's going on beneath the surface of his characters. Vincent's two friends come off as real people, not types, and their own relationships aren't just filler for the main narrative: They offer shades of subtlety (sometimes comic and sometimes wistful) to the story. (Most notably, the prickly liaison between George and Nathalie pops into stark relief by the movie's end; they go from being the sort of mismatch headed for disaster to two people whose frustration with each other is its own kind of functional adoration -- you can't picture them apart.) And as Attal plays him, Vincent isn't a bad guy, or even a particularly misguided one. We have no idea how he's fallen into this affair, or even, really, how much it means to him. Vincent exudes cheerful averageness; in some ways he seems too boring to embark on an affair.

Next Page: A love letter from Attal to Gainsbourg -- and her response

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