My Wife Is an Actress (2001)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 73
Fresh: 48 | Rotten: 25
My Wife is an Actress is a delightful, snappy romantic comedy.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 18 | Rotten: 6
My Wife is an Actress is a delightful, snappy romantic comedy.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 3,100
My Rating
Movie Info
Actor Yvan Attal follows up on his 1997 directorial debut of I've Got a Woman with this wry romantic comedy about a regular guy dealing with his wife's fame and career. Yvan (Attal) is a youngish sports writer who, through some improbable luck, finds himself happily married to the beautiful Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a fantastically popular movie actress. All is going swimmingly for Yvan until a stranger plants the seeds of jealousy and doubt in his mind over his wife and her libertine
Cast
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Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte -
Yvan Attal
Yvan -
Terence Stamp
John -
Noémie Lvovsky
Nathalie -
Laurent Bateau
Vincent -
Ludivine Sagnier
Geraldine -
Keith Allen
David -
Lionel Abelanski
Georges -
Jo McInnes
Assistant Director
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All Critics (87) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (48) | Rotten (25) | DVD (10)
Attal pushes too hard to make this a comedy or serious drama. He seems to want both, but succeeds in making neither.
Top CriticI found it slow, predictable and not very amusing.
My Wife Is an Actress is an utterly charming French comedy that feels so American in sensibility and style it's virtually its own Hollywood remake.
The film's as witty as any subtitled movie has a right to be.
It's Othello Lite -- minus that bit at the end about murder-suicide, but with every ounce of Shakespeare's insane emotion.
Little more than a frothy vanity project.
Quirky French films like this can either work really well or be absolutely intolerable. Thankfully, this proves to be a very enjoyable comedy about jealousy.
Both Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsborough are thoroughly appealing, as their unblinking honesty and openness shines through even the film's silliest bits.
Attal's hang-ups surrounding infidelity are so old-fashioned and, dare I say, outdated, it's a wonder that he couldn't have brought something fresher to the proceedings simply by accident.
Never less than clever and often digs down into some uncomfortable realities about the strange lives of that odd species known as 'movie people.'
God help the poor woman if Attal is this insecure in real life: his fictional Yvan's neuroses are aggravating enough to exhaust the patience of even the most understanding spouse.
"My Wife is an Actress" blends elements of fiction and reality, shakes them up and hopes for the best.
It's the kind of movie that ends up festooning U.S. art house screens for no reason other than the fact that it's in French (well, mostly) with English subtitles and is magically 'significant' because of that.
Starts off witty and sophisticated and you want to love it -- but filmmaker Yvan Attal quickly writes himself into a corner.
Not only is this material slight, it also seems ridiculously padded.
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Foreign Titles
- Meine Frau, die Schauspielerin (DE)
- Ma femme est une actrice (FR)
After watching this film, you shouldn't wonder why relationships in Hollywood last as long as milk on a hot day. Yvan Attal's deft, comic story-telling renders all the awkwardness a man might feel while watching his wife naked on screen. And the scene in which he surprises her on set only to find the entire cast and crew naked is truly hilarious. I'm glad that the film stopped at sexual jealousy and didn't suggest that Yvan was emasculated because his wife's success eclipsed his own. Such a plot would have been cliche and reduced Yvan's character to nothing more than a typically insecure male.
Terence Stamp is perfectly cast as the cad co-star who crosses the line between creating "on-screen chemistry" and seducing another man's wife. His lecherous looks make him dangerously charming, and there is the right amount of self-aggrandizing to make his character worthy of comic ridicule.
I was fully prepared to go as high as four stars until the end. I don't know what Attal was thinking, but the story never resolved. We never know what motivates this couple's decision, and as a result, it's difficult to determine what exactly Attal is saying about these characters or the business of filmmaking.
Overall, though, My Wife Is an Actress provides some brilliant moments and is filled with charming performances.