Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud

France released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), Spanish ( Mono ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.66:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Nelly is underemployed, in debt, and married to a slacker. She meets Arnaud, a wealthy retired magistrate and businessman whose wife lives in Geneve with another man and whose children hardly speak to him. He offers to pay her debts, no strings attached. She leaves her husband and accepts Arnaud's gift. He then offers a job typing and editing his memoirs, which she takes. She is beautiful, amused, detached; he is observant and probing. She meets his youthful publisher, they begin a love affair. When that ends and it is also clear that her husband and she are irreconcilable, Nelly's delicate friendship with Arnaud is her refuge. Then his wife returns and things must change. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Ceasar Awards, David Donatello Awards, ...Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud ( Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud ) ( Nelly and Mr. Arnaud )

Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart), a young married woman disillusioned with life and her self-unemployed husband, meets Monsieur Arnaud (Michel Serrault), an older, retired judge and businessman, through a mutual friend. The two begin a subtle, undefined relationship that leaves them in the end changed a little more profoundly than either expected. Monsieur Arnaud offers Nelly a considerable sum of money to pay her debts, no strings attached. Along with the money she accepts a job assisting Arnaud in writing his memoirs. As the writing progresses, Nelly comes to know the morally ambiguous past of her employer, and Arnaud contends with awakened feelings of longing. It ends abruptly when Arnaud and his ex-wife decide to tour the world on their way to Seattle, where he will see his estranged son. The French seem to have a talent for ambiguity and subtlety that this film shows off at its best. The relationship between the young woman and the older man is wonderfully intriguing in the way it plays out and changes each of them, and even more wonderful in that they never wind up in bed together. Béart and Serrault give flawless, nuanced performances as two people caught in each other's longing. A quiet and deeply satisfying film. --James McGrath