Gabrielle

Aroview: Absorbing adaptation of a Joseph Conrad short story coolly dissects the disintegrating marriage of a bourgeois French couple.

Gorgeously framed and theatrically talky in the grand tradition of Gallic two-handers, this oft-told drama of cracked veneers is enriched by Isabelle Huppert's exhaustively emotive turn as a long-suffering socialite wife, almost matched by Greggory as her once-proud husband all at sea in the agony of emotions laid bare. Disregard the odd self-indulgent stylistic diversion into Brechtian territory, as patient viewing will reap rewards.