My Wife is an Actress

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * * )

A sort of Gallic Woody Allen with a generous pinch of je ne sais quoi, this slight but enjoyably frantic romantic comedy is both an entertaining anatomy of jealousy and a witty homage to the movies.

The central premise that a man's jealousy about his lover's on-screen canoodling may not be irrational resonates for us because, as cinemagoers, we need to believe in the artifice on show. We understand when co-stars live out the passions they enact for take after take; more than that, we enjoy it, because it sustains the film's illusion.

Evidence to the contrary - that actors who play enemies fall for each other less often than those who play lovers, say, or that relationships born on set seldom last more than months or even weeks never seems to dent anyone's willingness to believe in the fantasies.

Attal's film carries the added kick that he's actually married to Gainsbourg. So his decision to give his and her character their real-life names seems to suggest elements of autobiography. But if his story depicts his private nightmares, it does so with a lightness of touch that makes it most enjoyable.

Attal plays Yvan, a television sports reporter whose apparently happy marriage to a famous actress, Charlotte (Gainsbourg), is dogged by reminders of her sex-symbol status. They're constantly accosted by autograph-hunters, a cop who pulls them over leeringly asks for her licence even though he's driving, and she can get 9pm bookings in restaurants that can't seat him before midnight.

When a mate asks Yvan whether he gets jealous watching his wife kiss on-screen lovers, he laughs the idea off but his nagging anxieties multiply when she's cast opposite a famous English actor (the grizzled and intimidatingly handsome Stamp) in a romantic drama. He forms a plan.

Attal's film is littered with clever, self-mocking humour: at the instant Charlotte assures him that movie kisses aren't real, they are walking past a kissing couple, for example, and when she sighs "Je t'aime" to Stamp, the heavy-breathed intonation exactly mimics that of her mother Jane Birkin in the 60s soft-porn pop song of her father, Serge.

But most of the film's pleasures are to be found in Attal's own generously revealing performance, which has none of the neurotic intensity of a hapless Woody Allen character.

We like him because we feel for him, even when he's silly.

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Yvan Attal, Terence Stamp Director: Yvan Attal Running time: 95m Rating: R13 (nudity and sex scenes) Screening: Lido