Roxio CinemaNow - Le Divorce

Ismail Merchant and James Ivory have returned with Le Divorce, a film which is clearly not the New York Times' A.O. Scott's cup of tea. He calls it a thin and unsatisfying concoction that somehow manages to make one of the richest and most durable sources of culture-clash comedy into an occasion for dullness. Based on the best-selling novel by Diane Johnson, which was praised by critics, the film is generally receiving dreadful reviews as it opens in mostly art houses today. Jonathan Foreman in the New York Post clearly expected something better from Merchant and Ivory. Who could have known they might be capable of making something as lumpy, dull-edged and sometimes bovinely crude as Le Divorce? he asks. Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post writes that the adaptation should have been a smart bit of cinematic froth but instead sinks like an overworked souffl?. Critics do give much praise to a stellar cast that includes Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Thierry Lhermitte, Leslie Caron, Sam Waterston, Matthew Modine, and Stockard Channing. But John Anderson in Newsday concludes: In its reliance on distracting, well-known faces, Le Divorce, feels more like late Woody Allen, where celebrated actors are scattered like sprigs of parsley, in order to give an insufficient dish some breadth. All it does, in the end, is intensify your yen for something solid.