Thérèse

Beautifully designed and photographed, this French import tells an almost relentlessly depressing tale of a 1920s bourgeois family and the woman who threatens its stability with her doomed, embittered longing for love. The script—co-written by director Claude Miller (who died shortly after the film was completed) and based on the 1927 novel Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac--serves up a series of downbeat episodes over a decade amidst gorgeous country landscapes and heavy-handed social commentary. Thérèse (Audrey Tautou) submits to an arranged marriage in order to bring the land owned by two families together—much in the way that kingdoms once forged alliances by trading princesses. Her husband (Gilles Lellouche) is an uptight aristocrat and the victim of Thérèse's clumsy attempt at murder (Thérèse also may or may not be responsible for devastating fires in their vast pine forests). The reasoning behind her increasingly morose alienation has to do with class subversion and possibly envy over the love that she sees her childhood friend Anne find (and then lose). Contrary to her most famous screen persona in Amelie, Tautou here is sullen and ashen, smoking endless cigarettes while falling deeper into catatonic despair. A bleak, if also closely observed, portrait of emotional devastation, this is optional, at best. (T. Fry)