The poster for Le Divorce, the latest production from the acclaimed Merchant-Ivory filmmaking team, offers up two of Hollywood’s most alluring young actresses, Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts, looking bright and summery.

The image suggests a chick-lit adaptation — not the sort of thing many filmgoers would associate with Merchant-Ivory, whose posters usually feature top-notch British actors and actresses looking austere.

But one should never judge the films of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory by their posters.

Because while Le Divorce is a relatively light-hearted comedy of manners, it bears the literate, mature stamp of the filmmakers’ previous work.

At the same time, the new movie’s libidinous themes remind viewers that the team’s previous projects — including A Room with a View and Remains of the Day — are more hot-blooded than their aristocratic pedigree might suggest: rich with passionate emotions — often repressed, at great cost, by their characters — and an abiding concern for political and social inquiry.

In a summer of bad boys, terminators and pirates, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory are the real rule-breakers. In a multiplex jam-packed with bigger booms and sleeker effects, they place their faith in two old reliables.

“It’s always a matter of stories and characters,” said James Ivory, 75, speaking from the rambling home, editing studio and arts center that they share in Claverack, Columbia County.

Merchant, 67, agrees: “No matter what period, really what propels you as as a filmmaker is making a connection with good stories and characters… You hope the audience is drawn into it.”

The two men — Merchant generally handles production duties, while Ivory usually directs and writes — met in New York City in 1961. Merchant, a great lover of film since his Bombay childhood, had just seen the California-raised Ivory’s second film, the documentary short Soldier and Flute.

“I just loved that film, and asked him to have a cup of coffee with me,” says Merchant. “We had coffee at a shop on Madison Avenue, and I asked him if he’d like to make a feature film in India. He said he hadn’t made a feature film, and I’d never produced one.”

Their first collaboration, 1963’s The Householder, featured a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, adapting her own novel, whose multiethnic background (Polish, German and English) suited their interests. It was the birth of a creative triumvirate that has lasted four decades.

Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala have collaborated on more than 30 theatrical films, television projects and documentaries, including Shakespeare Wallah (1965), The Bostonians (1984), A Room With a View (1986), Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1989) and Howard’s End (1992). Most of their titles are period pieces, ranging from Edwardian England to Depression-era America and colonial India.

Le Divorce, based on a bestselling 1997 novel by Diane Johnson, is their first film to take place in the present day since Slaves of New York, their 1989 adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s novel about Manhattan’s art scene — an unsuccessful project critically and commercially.

Adapting a contemporary story is different than adapting an established literary classic, says Ivory. “You can improvise dialogue — which you really can’t do if you’re doing a classic like a novel by Henry James… And sometimes what the actors come up with is very good.

“It’s also different in that you’re not worried about what may be seen in the street, or a certain kind of car or person that shouldn’t be there, or a feature of the landscape.”

Like previous Merchant-Ivory adaptations, such as E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View and Henry James’ The Europeans, Le Divorce is a sly tale of cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Hudson stars as Isabel Walker, a Californian who comes to Paris to comfort her pregnant sister (Watts), who has just been abandoned by her French husband. It is a comedy that vividly portrays the large gap between French and American traditions and customs, mirroring, on a much smaller scale, the current state of political affairs between the countries.

“The characters are so delightful,” Merchant says.

Merchant and Ivory have always been able to recruit great actors for supporting roles, and Le Divorce is no exception: Glenn Close, Leslie Caron, Stockard Channing, Matthew Modine and Sam Waterson round out the cast. But the two leads — both recent Oscar nominees — promise more marquee wattage than even Merchant-Ivory is used to.

Hudson “was a lot of fun,” says Ivory. “One of the great things about her, she doesn’t put on any kind of manner — she has no attitude that puts people off. She really is … an unspoiled type; I hope she goes on like that.”

Although Merchant and Ivory are known for their films, they frequently undertake other artistic endeavors under the auspices of the Merchant and Ivory Foundation, which they founded in 1991.

“It started … with the idea that it would support young filmmakers, writers, composers, and give them small amounts of money to realize their dreams,” says Merchant.

The foundation, which exhibits many of its projects at the Red Mills, a gallery and performance space near their house in Claverack, also supports film preservation. One recent labor of love was the restoration and preservation of nine classic films by the great Indian director Satyajit Ray (including the classic Apu trilogy), whom Ivory cites as his greatest influence.

“(The films) were languishing in England,” says Merchant. “They were saved by the efforts of Merchant-Ivory.”

On Sept. 27, the Red Mills will open an exhibition of paintings by Hudson Valley artist Franklin Tartaglione. “Usually there’s one big show a year,” says Ivory. The upcoming exhibit “is all sorts of new work of his — they’re great, big pictures.”

Merchant and Ivory are already preparing two films to follow Le Divorce. One will be based upon an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Remains of the Day, that he wrote especially for them. The other is an adaptation of Peter Cameron’s 2003 novel City of Your Final Destination,” which is set in Uruguay.

Merchant, who has directed several films separate from Merchant-Ivory (including 2001’s The Mystic Masseur), is also set to direct a film, based on an Indian legend, starring Tina Turner.
“That (slate of projects) keeps us pretty busy,” says Ivory, “or will, once Le Divorce and all the openings are past.”