Pensive Gargoyle

Last night, we watched La Femme de Gilles.  Set in a small French town in the 1930s, the film explores the complex relationship between Elsa, played beautifully by Emmanuelle Devos, and her husband Gilles, who is having an affair with her younger sister Victorine.  After confirming that Gilles is having an affair, Elsa does something surprising.  She doesn’t leave him, she doesn’t erupt into a rage.  No, instead, she remains steadfast and loyal to the man who is so passionately “in love” with her sister.  And when  Gilles thinks Victorine is seeing someone else, she helps him find out who it is in a feeble attempt to calm his  furious jealousy.  While some might be initially surprised by Elsa’s stoic acceptance of the affair between Victorine and Gilles, the film’s shocking end shows the meek and humble housewife to be cunning and deftly shrewd in her quest to defend her role as Gilles’ wife/woman. 

I hate that the English translation of the title is Gilles’ Wife because, since in French “femme” can be translated as either “woman” or “wife,” the original title lends to the sense of ambiguity over who really is the woman in Gilles’ heart.  That was absolutely the only thing I hated about the movie.  It is a fabulous film, a dramatic tour de force.  One of the most striking things about the film is that hardly anyone says ANYTHING.  But how powerful this silence turns out to be!  The lack of dialogue is masterfully effective in portraying the tension between Elsa and Gilles, and, moreover, the inner battle going on inside Elsa’s head and heart.  The silence not only exposes Elsa’s inner turmoil better than any words could, but it also gives us, as viewers, time to process and think about what is going on.  Inasmuch, we feel her anxiety, we feel her angst.  Through the silence, we see that she has no words for what she is feeling and experiencing, yet we understand just the same.

One scene from the film that still stays with me takes place after Gilles and Elsa take their family on a picnic.  On the train back to their village, a woman seated across the aisle from Elsa and her family gazes at them and smiles sweetly, as if she were thinking, “Isn’t that woman lucky!”  Indeed, from the exterior, any bystander would think that Elsa’s life is perfect—she lives in a large house, has a handsome, hardworking husband, and is the mother of twin daughters and a new baby boy.  How deceiving appearances can be. . . .