Based on Joseph Conrad's short story "The Return," French filmmaker and theatre director Patrice Chereau's Gabrielle faithfully adapts the writer's brilliant piece of prose into a visual and narrative delight. Recreating turn-of-the-century France with superb attention to detail, Chereau casts an unrelenting gaze on the events that overwhelm a middle-aged, seemingly happily married couple. Grounding Gabrielle are supreme performances from Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory. The opening shots mirror the first paragraphs of Conrad's story, as the arrogant, bourgeois M. Hervey descends from a train into the teeming bustle of the city. While on his way home, he reflects on the sturdiness of his life: the success he has made of it, and the fortress of security he has built around himself. It is not long before his self-satisfaction is rudely shattered when he discovers a letter from his wife, Gabrielle, waiting for him on his sideboard. The contents of the message will crumble that security and plunge him into newfound feelings of vulnerability, abandonment and betrayal. Husband and wife find themselves engaged in a parry-and-thrust of emotions that change mid-sentence and stretch their ability to function and live in the same house.

"Chеreau's films have always been marked by their dark, unrelenting penetration of the human psyche. Gabrielle achieves a deep emotive power, which is in no small part due to the exceptional performances by the two lead actors. This is a chamber piece: much of it takes place in the sumptuous, brooding house M. Hervey loves so deeply. The mature focus on the unhappy married couple is the film's greatest strength, in a way that recalls Ingmar Bergman's films on the same subject. Gabrielle is an intense and interior film with moments of sublime visual power; cinematographer Eric Gautier sculpts light and shadow into magical patterns. The combination of atmospheric settings, ardent performances and painterly camerawork makes Gabrielle a magical and absorbing piece of cinema."

Piers Handling