The Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche is the star of the film The Good Wife Manual (La bonne épouse), an entertaining French comedy directed by Martin Provost.
Taking care of the home and doing one’s marital duties without complaining: this is what Paulette Van Der Breck teaches fervently in her school for teenage boarders from good families and with their nightgowns closed up to their necks, who have to learn to be good wives, i.e. to cook, clean, sew, iron, receive, to be always impeccable and to smile, and to accept everything the husband wants as if they were divine precepts, including “painful marital duty”. Her certainties will falter the moment she is widowed and ruined. Is it the return of her first love or the wind of freedom of May 68? What if the good wife became a free woman?
