I decided to watch Nathalie… after watching Chloe and realizing that it was a remake of a French movie. Other than sharing the same premise of a wife hiring a hooker to find out more about her husband’s extracurricular activities, the movies are completely different. One is about a woman disconnected from her loved ones and resolving her midlife crisis by exploring her same sex attraction whereas the French original is about a woman who suddenly finds herself dissatisfied with everyone’s expectations of what she should be satisfied with and begins to disrupt her routine. This review is going to contain spoilers for both films.
Nathalie… has more in common with Elle than Chloe in that routine expectations get disrupted by a man’s sexual urges, and she must continue to live life while incorporating the shockwaves of this disruption into daily life. The overall tone of Nathalie… is far less erotic than Chloe. Unlike Chloe, her husband is not only having an affair, he is completely honest with her about it, partially blames her for his straying and still expects that their relationship is completely fine. They are not a distant married couple like Chloe. They are socially close and confidants, but not sexually interested in each other. She cares for her mother, who also takes for granted that men will cheat, and she is lucky to have a man as fine as Gerald Depardieu (bwahahahahahahahahahaha). The wife silently dissents from her husband’s refusal to accept his terse explanation or her mother’s advice to be grateful to even have a man. She decides to get this information by hiring a hooker and going to a nearby stripclub/brothel.
The best part of Nathalie… is the puncturing the idea of the lone sex worker who exists only for you and just conveniently emerges from nowhere. Sex work is treated like work, a commercial transaction, and is a little sordid. While the wife is an unusual customer, she is still a patron, and her growing adjustment to becoming a regular patron is more interesting than just making it purely sexual. She is transgressing boundaries and expectations by being a lone woman of a certain age alone in the club instead of there with her man. Also by setting their initial encounter in the workplace, the transition from business to personal is more intriguing and unexpected than titillating and cliché. This film understands that the hooker is a real person with friends, hobbies and interests outside of work. When they take turns infringing on each other’s personal and professional spaces, it is greeted with alarm but also an understandable difficulty in figuring out who they are to each other since the business relationship should only be about sex, but cannot be since the client is not asking for physical intercourse. They are consciously working together to create the fictional titular character that will ensnare the husband. This film is far less tense and obsessive than its North American counterpart.
There is a class chasm missing in the remake. Even though I cannot fully grasp the nuance because there is a cultural and language barrier that gets lost in translation when you are an English speaking American watching a French film, I could still discern that Marlene, the sex worker, and the wife frequently have tense exchanges of Nathalie looking cheap and not being worthy of her husband’s attention. To be fair, the wife has no idea what her husband’s mistress type is since he won’t share that part of their life with her so the wife uses Marlene as a competitive proxy to win her husband’s affections. The wife does not discover until later that she is right and gets a vengeful thrill at the idea that her husband is sleeping with a hooker because he is disgusted by the idea of a commercial transaction and proud of his prowess. Because Marlene knows that the wife’s assessment of her is accurate, she rips her off. Marlene is a complete character and does not exist to solely satisfy the needs and insecurities of the main character.
The big surprise is that despite the socio economic chasm, they end up awkwardly becoming more like friendly, chatty girlfriends than a patron and a client. The wife ditches her husband twice to hang out with her and gives her access to parts of her life that her husband and son do not occupy. There is a sororal bond between the women. Marlene’s overt sexuality inspires the wife to realize that she is a catch, and her husband is lucky to have her. Fanny Ardant plays the wife, and she is objectively hot. Think Nigella Larson, but French and more sexy. The wife’s career isn’t revealed until after thirty-five minutes, and the gynecologist’s day seems like a latent male fantasy than another day in the office, a part of the wife’s routine, and a sign that she is not the only woman questioning how useful a man is to her life. She is not primarily defined by her job or as a mother, but as a significant other and her journey is to remember what it is like to become uncoupled as a woman.
Part of that exploration is sexual, but it is not solely sexual. She has a liaison with a bartender and eventually sleeps with Marlene after she figures out the twist, but she is almost untouched by these encounters. Once relationships become sexual, they become disposable and a full stop to any relationship. She is more curious about what it feels like to be her husband, unavailable and still desired, but able to go home and expect her spouse to put up with her absences. Her identity is fixed, but her sexuality is only a tool to discover what she wants to keep and discard from her life. She sees herself as enough, and no longer needs her husband’s desire as a factor in her self-worth.
The son in Nathalie… is an afterthought, a more marginal character than he is in Chloe. The wife is completely unbothered by his sexual relationship with his girlfriend whereas the husband ridicules his son’s hair (to be fair, the father is right) and is a little bothered that his son is old enough to go on double dates with his parents. Perhaps he is envious of his youthful abundance of hair and open opportunity. The son only acts as a harbinger of the staleness of all relationships as the son takes for granted his girlfriend’s company, and they sit at home watching tv like an old couple whereas his parents are prowling the streets at night. The husband does not think that his wife is having an affair, but he knows that the tables are turned, and she is bored of him. The lesson of Nathalie… seems to be don’t take your chick for granted, or she’ll get sick of your crap and go on her own adventures.
Nathalie… is a far more convincing and mature narrative to the prurient Chloe, but it nearly put me to sleep. To be fair, I did not get enough sleep the night before, but I only think that was a contributing factor. While the remake may be sensationalist, trite fantasy, I never nodded off.