'Le Divorce' is a romantic comedy-drama from James Ivory of Merchant-Ivory fame. Kate Hudson travels from California to Paris to visit her half sister Naomi Watts. Watts is pregnant with her and husband Melvil Poupaud's second child, but he walks out on her in favor of a Russian girl. Hudson gets a job working for ex pat American writer Glen Close and persues a relationship with Poupaud's neocon uncle Thierry Lhermitte, whose older sister Leslie Caron does not approve. There is also a dispute about ownership of a painting, which art appraiser Bebe Neuwirth thinks may be a lost work of Renaissance artist Georges de La Tour, so Hudson's parents Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing as well brother Thomas Lennon fly over to maintain the family claim. Stephen Fry is here and Matthew Modine is stalking about up to no good and there is just too much going on.
Starts out promising enough but becomes a tangled mess. It's a comedy only in a very abstract sense and takes an unexpectedly dark turn about 2/3rds through. A fair amount of this is pretty good, but again there is just too much going on, too many characters, too many stories. A leaner version of this film may have worked, but this one never quite coalesced. **1/2
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