(2005; French) Performed throughout in a minor key, director Patrice Chéreau's désolé cinéma, based on a short story by Joseph Conrad, takes place within a few weeks during fin-de-siècle Paris, depicting a bourgeois marriage of ten years duration between a middle-aged couple, self-contented Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory), "a man with money and friends," and Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert), whom he praises in the opening, black-and-white introduction as intelligent and sophisticated with a beautifully "impassive face," "candid and faithful," in whom he has complete confidence and trust, the most treasured prize in his collection of valuables - she being his sole reason for living.

Scenes of color (beginning with the couple's Thursday soirée with their growing circle of friends) alternate with black-and-white (the latter often associated with Jean's narrative), taking us, one step at a time, on a downward spiral staircase to the dissolution of their disconsolate relationship. It had not been a romantic union: adoration on Jean's part, certainly, but as Gabrielle confides to her servant (they are constantly attended from dressing to dining by several female domestics in their home) Yvonne ("pretty name … petty soul") she had been happy only twice in her life (the surety of Jean's certainty in choosing her had been the first, believing herself "well matched") but could not bear the thought of Jean's semen inside her body.

While Gabrielle took up an interest in philanthropy, Jean's preoccupations turned to politics, which led to his investing in a newspaper. His gregarious, "oily and vengeful" editor (the newspaper has become a great success), a man he loathes ("prissy, fat") and refers to as a "jackass," also attends the Thursday evening parties.

Returning home in a cheerful mood from a long day's work, Jean finds a letter from Gabrielle propped up on his desk: "I forgive you," it ends: "Good-bye." Angry, having cut himself when he dropped his flask of liquor while reading the missive, feeling humiliated, he's nonplussed when Gabrielle returns (gone less then four hours) the same evening. "A mistake," she admits: "There's nothing more to say." Jean refuses to leave things unstated, "no love in it," he rants, "passion," insisting that they discuss the incident, which he turns into an interrogation of her motives - a sudden impulse? long planned? - expressing his fear of having been made a fool or worse (her death would have been better than this): "What brought you back?" She quietly answers, "I don't know."

When he says, after proclaiming his own innocence, "I forgive you," she bursts into laughter. A long time in coming has been her realization of her suffering and joyless condition, Gabrielle says to her husband at dinner (his wanting to dismiss the day's distemper) of her descent, to which she says her life had been directed by living with him; silent suffering would have been preferable to such behavior, he admonishes, promising that she will pay a price (the law being entirely on his side) for her infidelity. "You'll see nothing but my pain," she replies.

Her hardness with others she now directs with full force entirely at Jean, who has not asked for the name of the man (with whom, Yvonne assuring her, the association had not been her fault because he had not respected the rules) whom she names and describes her encounter with: "I wanted to experience love once in my life." Her second moment of pleasure had been in writing her letter of farewell to Jean.

Never would she have returned, she tells him, had she thought he loved her or believed she mattered at all to him. Sacrificially she lays bare herself to whatever he demands or desires from her.

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