Gilles´ Wife

Colour, 35 mm
Belgium, France, 2004, 103 min
Section: Horizons
Oficiální stránky: www.lafemmedegilles.com

Synopsis

Set in the 1930s, Gilles’ Wife is a film version of the novel of the same name by Madeleine Bourdouxhe. “I started reading the book, but stopped after the first page. But a friend said I should stick with it, so I read the second page. Then I just couldn’t stop,” the director says. Gilles and Elisa look like a happy couple — she is a model mother and housewife: she cooks, washes, cleans, and patiently waits for her husband to come home from his shift. He works hard to support the family, especially after Elisa finds herself once again expecting a blessed event. Her sister Victorine just got a job in the city and stops by often to help out with the kids.... Once in a while Elisa has the feeling that things aren’t quite right with her husband, but she always ignores it — pregnant women are always getting funny ideas. Thus the discovery of the truth is all the more painful. Elisa’s struggle to save everything she loves is desperate, silent, and courageous.

About the director

Frédéric Fonteyne (b. 1968, Brussels) studied television direction and film at Belgium’s Institute of Broadcasting Arts (IAD, Louvain-la-Neuve) in 1985-89, and shot several shorts at the beginning of the nineties. La modestie (1991), scripted by Philippe Blasband, was screened in the Critics’ Week at the Venice IFF. In 1993 he won an award from the Fondation Belge de la Vocation, and two years later IAD asked him to lecture in direction. In 1998 he taught at Parallax Acting School. Fonteyne shot his first feature, Max et Bobo, in 1997, and two years later made the successful A Pornographic Affair (Une liaison pornographique), which secured Nathalie Baye a Best Actress Coppa Volpi at the Venice IFF. The latter film was shown in 2000 at Karlovy Vary in the Horizons section. It also took the Media 2001 Award, conferred by the EU
Commissioner for Culture.