Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
39 Adventures of Power
66 Afterschool
73 Amreeka
49 Antichrist
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
71 Big Fan
65 Black Dynamite
76 Bliss
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
76 Broken Embraces
70 Bronson
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
60 Collapse
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
53 Dare
50 Defamation
67 Departures
70 Earth Days
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
88 Fantastic Mr. Fox
31 Fix
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
xx From Mexico with Love
28 Gentlemen Broncos
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Horse Boy, The
74 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
26 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
43 Little Traitor, The
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
46 Love Hurts
84 Maid, The
45 Mammoth
75 Messenger, The
55 Missing Person, The
59 More Than a Game
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
48 New York, I Love You
66 No Impact Man
26 Oh My God
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
79 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73 Red Cliff
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
65 Skin
41 Splinterheads
42 Staten Island
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
58 Storm
82 Sun, The
49 Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73 That Evening Sun
61 Trucker
49 Turning Green
83 U2 3D
45 Uncertainty
67 Visual Acoustics
32 War on Kids
67 Way We Get By, The
65 Wedding Song, The
xx White on Rice
59 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74 Woman in Berlin, A
43 Women in Trouble
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Gilles' Wife

EMAILPRINTCinema Guild

Gilles' Wife reviews
82
8.1 User Score:

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Foreign

Written by: Philippe Blasband
Frédéric Fonteyne
Marion Hänsel
Madeleine Bourdouxhe (novel)

Directed by: Frédéric Fonteyne

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 16, 2005
DVD: August 8, 2006

Running Time: 103 minutes, Color

Origin: Belgium / France / Luxembourg / Italy / Switzerland

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Emmanuelle Devos, Clovis Cornillac, Laura Smet, Alice Verlinden, Chloé Verlinden, Colette Emmanuelle, and Gil Lagay

Set in the 1930's, Gilles' Wife is a haunting tale of love and betrayal in a small mining town on the outskirts of France. (Cinema Guild)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

90

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

You can't imagine a soapier setup, but Gilles' Wife taken on its own terms is a spectacular achievement, a heartbreaking cinematic work that finely balances melodrama, family love story and devastating tragedy.

Read Full Review >
90

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.

Read Full Review >
90

Village Voice David Ng

Devos's performance is an expert workshop of internalized emotions and silent forbearance.

Read Full Review >
88

TV Guide Ken Fox

Cornillac is excellent as the emotionally immature Gilles, but this is Devos' show.

Read Full Review >
88

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The ending is a stunner. Like those '30 classics it suggests, Gilles' Wife seduces us with true cinematic magic: rich characters, great acting and that rapturous old French blend of realism and theatricality.

Read Full Review >
88

Miami Herald Marta Barber

There's a timelessness to her character that makes her real even today. And in Devos' intense portrayal, she's a woman you admire.

Read Full Review >
80

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

All but a silent movie, Frédéric Fonteyne’s strikingly atmospheric film - adapted by Philippe Blasband and Marion Hänsel from a 1937 novel - relies on the extraordinarily mobile face of Emmanuelle Devos to express the pain of a woman who has no language for her inner turmoil.

Read Full Review >
80

Los Angeles Times Robert Abele

Suffused with a painterly tenderness and cruelty, the French film Gilles' Wife - based on a 1937 Belgian novel by Madeleine Bourdouxhe - stars the extraordinary actress Emmanuelle Devos.

Read Full Review >
80

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

An impeccable minimalist drama that's tailored specifically to Devos' expressive capabilities, which say more than the sparse dialogue.

Read Full Review >
80

Chicago Reader Reece Pendleton

While the outcome is never really in doubt, director Frederic Fonteyne illuminates the wife's inner world with a rich sense of atmosphere, and Emmanuelle Devos' riveting performance manages to convey every shift in her character's suppressed emotional life with the subtlest of gestures and expressions.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Fonteyne doesn't have much use for words. He prefers to tell his story via facial expressions and body language, much as filmmakers did in the silent era.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This is a lyrical art movie with admittedly limited commercial appeal, but worth seeing for cinematic explorers.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I was fascinated by the face of Emmanuelle Devos, and her face is specifically why I recommend the movie.

Read Full Review >
70

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Has an appealing surface beauty, largely due to the talented cinematographer Virginie Saint Martin, and an equally shallow mystery.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

J H gave it a7:
The acting and directing are first-rate, but I was unable to suspend my disbelief of a story about a woman who had no courage, so I wasn't fully engaged by this movie.

Sherri E. gave it a6:
That 6 is actually a 9 for technical excellence and a 3 for story. The film is so beautifully photographed, and the acting so fine, that the disappointing story becomes trebly so. Her final decision is so selfish and cruel that it retroactively tainted the preceding 100 minutes.

richard gave it a7:
I found this film engrossing but frustrating....in the wife's total compliance.

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use