HOW cold they are, the bourgeoisie, so smug in their affluence and possessions, the life-style of privilege that defines their worth. Luis Bunuel viewed them with an anthropological fascination, puncturing their self-obsession with darkly surreal satire, most tellingly The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie. Patrice Chereau, coming from a background of theatre, prefers the weapon of stylised melodrama. By transposing Joseph Conrad's short story The Return and turn-of-the century London to belle epoque Paris he finds juicy source material.

So enter the self-satisfied mind of M Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory) as he walks home to his mansion, his hand-tailored clothes and cold stare of achievement implicitly proclaiming his superiority. He is looking forward to an evening with carefully chosen friends, a soiree hosted each Thursday by his well-bred wife, Gabrielle. "I love her as a collector does his most prized item, " he thinks. The black-and-white imagery changes to colour, reflecting a switch from stream of consciousness to exterior reality.

We're immersed in the impeccable good taste of his entertaining, the servants with their white gloves serving food from silver trays, the guests appropriately dressed in evening attire, the conversation peppered with bon mots.

His wife presides over the evening, aloof yet incisive if required, her candid directness seemingly much admired.

A return to black-and-white indicates all this is flash-back.

Back in the present, we follow Hervey up to his room . . . he and his wife sleep separately . . . where a letter awaits him. He pours a glass of Scotch before opening it. He drops the glass on the floor. The colour drains from his face. There is a stunning silence. His wife has left him.

"If at least you have died, I would have received condolence and known how to respond, " he thinks.

His shock is at having to explain her disappearance. Before he can come up with a strategy, she returns as abruptly as she left, setting up a confrontation in which perhaps for the first time in their lives they say to each other what they mean rather than what is appropriate to their status.

It develops into a verbal duel played out before the servants and later their guest . . . it would have been inconceivable to have called off dinner. "I wrote because I didn't know how to talk to you, " she tells him. "This letter is not the worst of it?" he asks. "No, " she says. "The worst is coming back."

He's such a wet fish, one's first instinct is to empathise with her, but the more she talks the more evident it becomes that she is every bit as self-centred as he is.

She is no Hedda Gabler or Madame Bovary.

If she left him out of indifference, her return is coldly calculated. It is a role tailor-made for Isabelle Huppert, an actress capable of finding feeling even in the most icy characters.

"Did you feel any pleasure with him?" he asks. "Of course I did."

"And with me?" "It wasn't important to us, was it?" She bursts out laughing when he eventually says, "Well, I forgive you." "You were so sure of yourself when you chose me, " she taunts.

The cut and thrust of their exchanges has a wounding intimacy that Patrice Chereau dispassionately observes through revealing reaction shots and closeups . . . as, for instance, when the camera lingers on Huppert, her face half turned away, her hand fingering her curls. For all its viciousness Gabrielle, with its deceptive unrushed period feel, is hugely seductive, breaking down the couple's reserve with clinical detachment.

"Your skin reflects your every thought, " Hervey says, with the smugness of a man who thinks he is in control. Chereau's triumph is that this is exactly what he achieves with the characters, seeing through the surface pretensions to the emptiness of their souls.

Night At The Museum (Shawn Levy):

Ben Stiller, Carlo Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mick Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams Running time: 108 mins . . .

Museums claim to bring history alive. The New York Natural History Museum actually does, at least according to the brilliant concept behind Ben Stiller's new comedy.

A down-and-out inventor, divorced from his wife and desperate to impress his son, he takes a job as a security guard at the museum only to discover that, after dark when it is closed, all the exhibits become real. Lions and monkeys prowl the marble corridors, Tyrannosaurus Rex goes on the rampage, followed by an equally ferocious Attila the Hun, and a Roman general pits his cohorts against the US cavalry. Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt develops a crush on an Indian squaw.

Nobody believes him the next morning, of course, least of all beautiful museum guide Carla Gugino whom he's trying to impress.

Add to this Rick Gervais as the curator who tries to manage the whole place like The Office and a trio of former guards . . . played by old-time stars Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs . . .

who are trying to rip off a Pharoah's gold, and it makes for lively family entertainment.