My Wife is an Actress (2001)

This is a very French, very romantic, and wryly funny film starring Yvan Attal as himself and his very lovely wife, Charlotte Gainsbourg as herself.  When I read that on the envelope that came with the movie, I wondered why the heck I had put it in my queue--it sounded terrible.  The nature of my queue is that if I am not paying very much attention to it, something that I put into it a year or more ago pops up, and I have no recollection of how it might have ended up there to begin with.  That being said, this is a great example of how that can be a very good thing indeed.

Yvan (Attal) is a youngish sports writer who, through some improbable luck, finds himself happily married to the beautiful Charlotte, a fantastically popular movie actress. All is going swimmingly for Yvan--he loves his wife, she loves him, and aside from the more than occasional fan interrupting a meal they are sharing, all is well in Yvan's life.  That is  until a stranger plants the seeds of jealousy and doubt in his mind over his wife and her on-film lovers.  The stranger (who is an ex-boyfriend of his sister's) goes on at some length about the kissing, the on-screen nudity and sex, and how it must be very hard to watch all that. Up until then Yvan hadn't really thought about it, and that was working pretty well for him.  So first he goes her latest movie--he thinks her sex scene with another man is, well, sexy.  He takes an acting class, and the girls in the class are so impressed with his acting that they want to sleep with him.  When they kiss him on stage, they are really kissing him.  Then he panics. Meanwhile, Charlotte is in London, starring in a movie with a very seductive and sophisticated Terence Stamp. And Yvan can tell that if Charlotte would let something happen with her co-star, he wouldn't kick her out of his bed.  Soon misunderstandings pile upon misunderstanding until Yvan's marriage is on the verge of collapse.  Voila!  Just like that!  The beauty and the fragility of a good relationship once again exposed by the French.