PLOT: A self-centred man who regards his life as perfect is forced to rethink everything when his wife leaves him -- and then comes back.

Gabrielle is a movie for people who really prefer the theatre.

The film, which opens today, features superb performances from Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, in an intense emotional undertaking about a married couple and their relationship. Much of the film is Huppert and Greggory verbally eviscerating their life together, not to mention their dreams and beliefs, and watching the give and take is like watching great theatre. Not too surprisingly, filmmaker Patrice Chereau is also a theatre director.

Gabrielle, which first played here at the Toronto International Film Festival, is set in France at the turn of the last century. The first part of the story is narrated by M. Hervey (Greggory), a man who congratulates himself on having health, money, a beautiful house and the perfect wife, Gabrielle.

He and she have been married 10 years.

"I know her thoughts. I know her dreams," he says to himself.

His self-satisfied train of thought is interrupted by the discovery of a note from Gabrielle; it's only a few lines, really, explaining that she has left him for another man. M. Hervey is devastated.

Then Gabrielle comes back.

What happens to these two people after such a tear in the fabric of their lives is what Gabrielle is really all about. Having spent a decade creating some sort of safety net for himself, emotionally speaking, M. Hervey now has to deal with the sort of feelings he despises in others.

Initially, he is focused on what the servants will think and what others might say, but eventually the polished social veneer is not just cracked but gone entirely, and what's left is subject to passion and pain. Not a pretty sight.

All that restraint and constraint in Gabrielle is very Henry James, but the tale is actually based on Joseph Conrad's story, The Return. You know how that goes: Emotinal darkness is generally involved.

Gabrielle is certainly pretty to look at, mind you, and with exquisite period detail. The film also uses music (and silence) in a fairly riveting fashion.

Gabrielle is in French with English subtitles.

BOTTOM LINE: Food for thought entry for those hoping to avoid mutant creatures and anyone named Tom at the movies.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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