I took recommendations from previous messages on this board and saw Bread and Tulips and enjoyed it immensely. I have been trying to watch as many movies set in Italy as possible, seeing we are going in April. It is so exciting! (And I'm not even a first-timer!!) I also enjoyed Roman Holiday, and I admit - even the Olsen twins' "When in Rome"!!!

I just saw Le Divorce at an advance screening last night and it IS a Paris lover's dream. While it's not a travelogue, it shows off Paris beautifully.

Hadn't realized that James Ivory directed, and that he and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Jefferson in Paris, Remains of the Day) wrote the screenplay.

Naomi Watts & Kate Hudson are parfait as the American sisters and the rest of the cast is wonderful: Glenn Close as an American writer living in Paris; Sam Waterston & Stockard Channing as the parents of the two sisters; Bebe Neuwirth as an art curator from the Getty Museum; Stephen Fry as a rep from Christie's; and Matthew Modine as a furious husband; and Leslie Caron as the matriarch of the French family in the movie. Aside from Caron, I didn't recogize the names and faces of any of the other French actors/actresses, but every one was great in their roles, especially the one who plays Caron's oldest brother. Melvil Poupaud, who plays Naomi Watts' husband, looks like a French Rob Morrow with a perpetual five o'clock shadow...Normandy Exposure anyone? :)

Capo. It opens here on Friday when I'll see it and start a new thread, join me to tell me if you liked it and did the characters fit the books image.

Thierry Lhermitte! Be still my heart. He was soooo dazzling in "Until September". Last year I even searched out (and found!) that little hotel Karen Allen stayed in in the movie.

Someone please tell me Thierry Lhermitte is NOT paired with Glenn Close!

In addition to the scenes of Paris, and the actors/actresses, I LOVED the movie itself. I have not read the book.

I presume Thierry was one of Caron's two brothers but I'm not sure which one.

As a side note, reps from the studio were there searching and wanding everyone for recording devices. Apparently there is a certain type of cellphone that can be used for recording movies, yet another unfortunate case where scammers inconvenience everyone else.

I've been waiting for this movie for months! The Paris scenery in the previews looks wonderful, and am glad to hear that the story is good too! It opens Friday in "select cities" and, unfortunately, my little midwest town isn't one of them (so I'll be waiting a few weeks to see it). I use to live in L.A. and loved being able to go to Westwood Village to see movies on their opening day if it wasn't playing near my home (in Orange County).

Interesting article from back on September 8, 2002:

"Californians in Paris; Merchant Ivory, Too"

http://www.nytimes.com/ads/ledivorce/a.html

A few excerpts...

Glenn Close, who plays an American expatriate novelist, Olivia Pace, described it as "a very charming, clever, complex script about the clash of cultures and how different cultures perceive each other."

"It's like a modern Henry James story, totally," she said.

...

"This is a film about human relations, set in a foreign country, made by foreigners," the soft-spoken, white-haired Mr. Ivory said during a break in the shooting of "Le Divorce." "That's what we do. Sometimes they're modern, sometimes they're not."

...

Ms. Johnson said that Merchant Ivory had always been her first choice to adapt the novel. "It just seemed to me like a picture that would look good if they did it," she said over vanilla tea and ginger snaps in her grand apartment on the toney Rue Bonaparte, where she spends half the year and was at work on her 12th novel.

...

"When I first went to the cheese man in our neighborhood, he wanted nothing to do with me," Ms. Hudson said. "Then, after about three weeks, we'd been in there, like, maybe, four times and we brought our dogs, and now he's, like, our best friend."

...

He [Mr. Ivory] admitted that he was somewhat baffled by what young women were wearing in Paris these days. But he said he hoped to capture the nuances of "the French attitude about sex and life and food and the American attitude about the same things," which lie at the heart of the story -- a view of life in Paris, not just a backdrop.

"Few American directors ever have commented on France," he said. "There's virtually no one who ever took the French seriously."