French kiss and make up

Quelle horreur! Le Divorce is a bit of a disappointment. I expected a sparkly little chick flick with plenty of good-looking French men. The reality was a quasi-comedy full of overwrought drama in all the wrong spots and a climax that was amazingly anticlimactic. \nIsabel Walker (Kate Hudson) travels to Paris to be with her sister Roxanne (Naomi Watts) shortly before she is to have a baby. Moments before Isabel arrives, Roxy's husband, Charles-Henri, walks out. Things spiral downward from this point. Isabel takes up with Charles-Henri's uncle, who is a great deal older than her. Charles-Henri wants to divorce Roxy so he can marry his new love, a married Russian woman named Magda. At this point we learn a bit about French law and a woman's place (or lack thereof) in it. There is also the question of a painting belonging to Roxy, which may or may not be by the famous painter La Tour. \nThe movie does have its high points. Some of the cultural commentary is quite funny without being "freedom-fries" funny, and seeing Isabel try to morph herself into an old-fashioned mistress is worth more than a few chuckles. Hudson is her normal charming, blonde self, and Watts was nice as a stereotypical fragile poet, although they didn't have the chemistry as sisters that one would like to see. The Walker family, played by Stockard Channing, Sam Waterson and Thomas Lennon, was definitely underused in the movie; their maladjustment to France was a comedic high point. Matthew Modine as Magda's crazed American husband is more or less horrible -- he didn't seem heartbroken, just crazy. \nBut more than anything, when the end of the movie came around, I thought to myself, "About damn time." I just didn't really care what happened to these people -- their misfortune didn't bother me and the eventual upturn didn't make me happy. The main problem was all of the nice little bits (the gorgeous scenery, the excellent cast, the well-developed characters), just didn't ever come together. It's like a lot of really nice paintings in a really ugly museum. So, unless you're a huge fan of one of the actors, wait until this comes to late night cable television.