MY WIFE IS AN ACTRESS
"...a feisty and self-aware first feature written and directed by
actor Attal, in which a less-than-star husband struggles with the
impact of his wife's fame. It's bad enough when the couple's private
time is regularly interrupted by autograph seekers; it's worst when
Charlotte is on the job--in bed...With every detail in this clever
peekaboo, the sly filmmaker dangles the possibility that fiction is
fact and that Yvan and Charlotte are real--or at least as real as
the movies." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment
Weekly
"'Actress' is clearly in thrall to Woody Allen's epic sketches of
self-loathing, though the picture has a beckoning blast of energy
that indicates it's a response to the perky French sex farces in which
jealousy passes like a spring rain... Though he doesn't have much
screen time, Mr. Stamp makes John's ease a kind of low-intensity joie
de vivre...Ms. Gainsbourg is a winning performer, too--a beguiling
mixture of willowy plaintiveness and slightly irregular beauty lit
up by a goofy smile...Though Mr. Attal's forehead is rumpled, there's
no sloppiness in 'Actress'; it's organized to find its comedy simply
and quickly for the most part." --Elvis
Mitchell, The New York Times
"Gainsbourg is virtually incidental to her mate's screeching navel-serenade,
which maintains a stranglehold on the declarative first-person mode
of its title. The subject of 'My Wife Is an Actress' is neither marriage
nor performance, but rather the easily pricked self-confidence of
Attal's Parisian sportswriter schmo. Equal parts Griffin Dunne and
Woody Allen, he spits up one-liners as if perpetually sickened by
the absurdity that surrounds him... 'My Wife Is an Actress' is allegedly
a comedy, the evidence including a grossly belabored set piece unveiling
a butt-naked film crew and an utterly pointless circumcision subplot
(the latter facilitating more Allen-ish angst with paranoid-Jew jokes)..."
--
Jessica Winter, The Village Voice
"Although the movie is not as hilarious as you'd hope from the screwball
setup, Gainsbourg and Attal make a solid comedy team. She's the straight
man, blithely unaware of her lopsided beauty. And he's a Woody Allen
in the making, mining his own neuroses for panic-attack material...Underneath
the light comedy, Attal's interest seems to be a philosophical one
about the nature of acting and the curtain that separates the public
from the process of moviemaking." --
Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News
"The French are very good at taking sit-commy setups and cloaking
the machinery with charming and surprisingly resonant comic nuance...What
gives 'My Wife Is an Actress' its extra juice is the natural energy
exchange between the spirited real-life couple, who conjure the sort
of credibly warm interplay that is hard to fake and probably harder
to reproduce in front of a camera." --Jan
Stuart, Newsday
"Though it's not much more substantial than Woody Allen's similar
'Hollywood Ending,' Attal's briskly paced film has a lot more energy...Gainsbourg
has an ultra-stylish but approachable screen presence that's nicely
offset by Attal's Ed Burns-like scruffiness..." --
Lou Lumenick, The New York Post
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