Le Divorce

Isabel Walker, a young Californian, travels to Paris to be with her pregnant sister Roxeanne, whose French husband Charles-Henri has left her and wants a quick divorce. Roxeanne is reluctant to agree, and her husband's wealthy family takes an interest in a painting she brought from California, which turns out to be worth a great deal. Meanwhile Isabel becomes involved with a married French diplomat who is Charles-Henri's uncle, and the affair sets off a scandal that pulls the two families further into conflict over the divorce and the painting. The story contrasts the sisters' American directness with the codes and manners of old French society.

James Ivory directed, working from a screenplay he wrote with Diane Johnson, on whose novel the film is based, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It was produced by Michael Schiffer, Ismail Merchant and Paul Bradley, and comes between Surviving Picasso and The White Countess in Ivory's filmography of eleven features. Kate Hudson plays Isabel, Naomi Watts plays Roxeanne, and Glenn Close, Marie-Christine Adam, Thierry Lhermitte and Melvil Poupaud appear among a credited cast of thirty-one.

The film was released in August 2003 and took about 13 million dollars worldwide. Audiences were unenthusiastic: it holds a rating of 4.9 on IMDb from over twelve thousand votes and 5 on TMDB from a much smaller sample. A critics' rating of 5.4 from 138 reviews places it close to the audience scores, so neither viewers nor reviewers responded strongly to this culture-clash comedy.