FILM REVIEW; Depardieu and Ardant Match Wits, a la Balzac
Janet Maslin www.nytimes.com janet-maslin
Marital wrangling via Balzac. Quietly intense, with sterling performances.
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The year is 1817 and the events described have been strongly influenced by Napoleon. But "Colonel Chabert," the new film version of a Balzac novel, which opens today at Sony Theaters Lincoln Square, has an odd and timely resonance. Much of its enduring interest comes from the familiar unpleasantness of bitter legal wrangling that is at the center of this story. Such strife yields an intimate, disturbing perspective on the social fabric that binds the tale's characters and defines their lives.

When an earlier French version of "Colonel Chabert" opened here in 1947, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said it involved "mostly a lot of talking with lawyers about signing things and precious little action of a revealing or absorbing sort." That's still true. But this time, in a quietly intense film directed by Yves Angelo (the cinematographer whose decorous credits include "The Accompanist" and "Un Coeur en Hiver"), those legal maneuvers become subtly ferocious and revealing.

The film reunites Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant, two formidable actors who brought such heat to Truffaut's "Woman Next Door," as a couple experiencing extraordinary marital difficulties. These two are expert, as might be expected, but the startling performance comes from Fabrice Luchini (who had a supporting role in "Claire's Knee") as their lawyer. The very fact that the warring spouses share a legal representative is one of the film's interesting peculiarities, as is the response of Countess Ferraud (Ms. Ardant) when she realizes how cleverly she is being manipulated to her husband's advantage. As she tells Derville (Mr. Luchini), her attorney, with sardonic admiration, "I'll never have any lawyer but you."

The opposing party is not precisely her husband. Playing an acutely civilized character who recalls his appearance in "The Return of Martin Guerre," Mr. Depardieu has the title role, that of an officer presumed killed in 1807 at the Battle of Eylau. Mr. Angelo begins his film with horrific glimpses of that battle's aftermath, and of society's orderly ways of dealing with such carnage. Then he finds the man who claims to be Colonel Chabert 10 years later.

He returns home greatly changed, a disaffected outsider. And he finds that his wife, thinking herself a widow, has married the ambitious Count Ferraud (Andre Dussollier, so expert with handsome, self-interested characters), who would now like to be rid of her. The Count aspires to a peerage, but his rich wife is a social liability, since her wealth was amassed during the reign of Napoleon. Napoleon is now desperately out of fashion.

One of the film's more arresting scenes is that in which Chabert first persuades Derville, who already represents the Count and Countess, to take his case. This glittery-eyed, intent lawyer is so fascinated by the situation's complex possibilities that he even agrees to handle Chabert at a financial risk. "Even if I lose my money, I won't regret it," he says, about a case that will force an investigation of Chabert's veracity. "I'll have seen the most skilled actor of our time."

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