Verdict: An ode to the pleasures of Paris that isn't sure what story it's telling.

By STEVE MURRAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ah, zee French, zey are so . . . how you say? Sophistiqué. Ooh, and zee cheese zat zey eat ees formidable! And for l'amour! Zere is nothing like zee French for zee ooh-lah-lah, n'est-ce pas?

And now I have exhausted every French cliché I learned in high school, so on with the review of “Le Divorce,” a movie whose view on all things Parisian isn't much more nuanced than that.

A rare Merchant-Ivory film that doesn't include bodices (but does have sexy lingerie), “Divorce” is like a Parisian tour bus with an underpowered engine. The scenery is charming, but as the running time passes, you wonder if the driver actually knows where he's going.

Kate Hudson plays Isabel, visiting her older half-sister, Roxeanne (Naomi Watts), who lives in Paris with her painter husband, Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud), and their young daughter. There's another baby on the way, but just as Isabel sets foot on their rue, Charles-Henri is leaving Roxy to be with a married Russian woman.

The response is the equivalent of a Gallic shrug from the wayward husband's family, headed by his grande dame mother, Suzanne (Leslie Caron). After all, men will be men — and Frenchmen, especially. Suzanne's married brother Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte), a conservative politician, has always had mistresses. And soon enough, Isabel becomes his latest, carrying Edgar's gift, a red Hermès purse, everywhere. The bag becomes a running gag, a sort of scarlet “A” that broadcasts her affair wherever she goes — but why she is attracted to the oleaginous Edgar (a sort of Pepe le Pew in nice suits) is never really clear.

Meanwhile, the abandoned Roxy mopes around, arguing with attorneys and Charles-Henri about a divorce she doesn't want, and learning that French law is complicated concerning marital assets.

Specifically, Roxy's inherited painting of St. Ursula may be an unknown work by Georges de la Tour, worth millions. The resulting tug-of-war over ownership between the French and American families brings the sisters' parents (Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston) and brother across the pond from California, upping the ante for culture shock. (Some of the funniest deadpan moments come from Thomas Lennon, the short-shorts-wearing cop on Comedy Central's “Reno 911!,” as the brother with his eye on the bottom line.)

It's all perfectly pleasant, but the movie lacks an urgent dramatic pulse, or a clear sense of whose story it's supposed to be, or even, from scene to scene, whether it's meant to be a comedy, drama or thriller. The film introduces Matthew Modine as the stalking, angry husband of Charles-Henri's girlfriend, and throws in an attempted suicide and a murder. These elements don't gel with the film's would-be winsome tone, and director James Ivory seems unsure what he's supposed to do with them. Like Isabel, it's as if he was so seduced by the ample pleasures of the city, he forgot he was there to do a job.

“Le Divorce” is best, if most obvious, in offering visual mini-essays on such things as Parisian scarves and French cuisine. And the supporting cast make scenes seem more interesting than they are, including Bebe Neuwirth in the small role of an art expert; Glenn Close sporting a curtain of gray hair as a dashing expatriate novelist; and Jean-Marc Barr as a lawyer whose relationship with Roxy seems to have been lost on the cutting room floor. Hudson relies a little too much on her twinkle-twinkle act, but she's bearable, whereas the gifted Watts is marooned in a whiny role that never really makes a lot of sense.

However welcome it is as a movie for adults in the teenage wasteland of summer flicks, “Le Divorce” wants to be a bonbon. But it's more of a so-so.

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