Features three films: Gabrielle (Chereau, 2005), Merci Pour Le Chocolat (Chabrol, 2000) and The Piano Teacher (Haneke, 2001).
Gabrielle: Patrice Chereau's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novella The Return is a gripping chamber piece in which a bourgeois man's stable, comfortable life is unexpectedly shattered. The time is turn-of-the-century France. Jean and his wife Gabrielle are a well-to-do couple who spend much of their time throwing lavish dinner parties.One day however, Jean discovers a letter left behind by Gabrielle, in which she confesses to Jean that she has been sleeping with another man and is leaving him for good. Devastated, Jean is understandably shocked again when Gabrielle returns home just a few hours later. Jean's pride mixes with jealousy, anger and bitterness, and the once happy couple begins to realize just how different they actually are, sparking a final confrontation that will decide their fate once and for all.
Merci Pour Le Chocolat: Huppert plays a villanous spider at the centre of an intricate and murderous web of deception. She harbours a dark and mysterious secret, one which is in danger of being exposed by the arrival of a mysterious young woman who may be her stepdaughter.
The Piano Teacher: Haneke's clinical adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel boasts two outstanding performances from Isabelle Huppert, as the repressed Viennese Conservatory professor, and Benoit Magimel as the student whom she demands beat her up. This is serious cinema, asking intelligent questions of modern culture and making similarly bruising demands upon its audience.
