Frédéric Fonteyne

GILLES’ WIFE

FEMME DE GILLES (LA)

Screening room

Status: Completed

Director(s): Frédéric Fonteyne

Main cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Clovis Cornillac, Laura Smet

Long synopsis : A working class district in rural France, between the Wars. Elisa is Gilles’ wife. She takes care of their children, and spends each day waiting for her husband to return home. Gilles works in the blast furnaces - sometimes by day, sometimes at night. The furnaces never shut down. Elisa’s sister, Victorine, often visits, to play with the children and help out in the house. Elisa is pregnant. She’s troubled by strange suspicions. Gilles and Victorine, Victorine and Gilles... but they’re just crazy ideas. Expectant mothers often get crazy ideas. Then one day, her suspicions becomes an unbearable certainty. Gilles and Victorine are lovers. Stunned, Elisa begins an interior battle, a battle of silence and a desperate, self abnegating heroism. A battle to recover what she has lost. To become, once again, Gilles’ wife. Featuring powerful performances, including an extraordinary tour-de-force from Emmanuelle Devos, Gilles’ Wife is a tragic and heart-rending portrayal of betrayed love and heroic self-immolation, a very human drama of passion and ultimate redemption from the internationally feted acclaimed director of Une Liason Pornographique.

Cast

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

Crew

Producer(s): Patrick Quinet, Claude Waringo
Director(s): Frédéric Fonteyne
Screenplay: Philippe Blasband, Madeleine Bourdouxhe, Frédéric Fonteyne, Marion Hänsel
DP: Virginie Saint-Martin
Editing: Ewin Ryckaert
Original Music: Vincent D'Hondt
Set Design: Véronique Sacrez

Original Title: FEMME DE GILLES (LA)
Genre(s): Historical Drama

Production company: LIAISON CINEMATOGRAPHIQUE, FRANCE 3 CINEMA, EYESCREEN, NORD-OUEST FILMS, FAMA FILM, MEDIA SERVICES
Production date: 2003
Language: French
Duration: 103 min
Image Ratio: 1.85
Sound Info: Dolby SRD