Dir. Stephen Frears, UK/Germany, 2009, 92 mins
Cast:
Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Rupert Friend
Review by Carol Allen
This adaptation of Colette's novel of the same name reunites the Dangerous Liaisons team of Frears, Pfeiffer and writer Christopher Hampton in a lush costume drama set in the "Belle Époque" Paris of 1906, the world of elegant courtesans in which Gigi grew up.
Pfeiffer plays ageing but still beautiful courtesan Léa de Lonval. Having reached "un certain age" and ensured her future is financially well provided for, she is contemplating retirement. However, at the request of fellow lady of pleasure and some time rival Mme Peloux (Bates), she takes Peloux's teenage son Fred, known as Cheri (Friend), as her lover to teach him about life and love. But the two become so attached to each other that what has now become an established love affair stretches from weeks into years. So when Peloux arranges a financially advantageous marriage for him with naïve young Edmée (Felicity Jones), daughter of another courtesan, who's made her pile, the parting is painful and complicated for both Léa and Cheri.
Hampton's screenplay perfectly captures the delicate irony of Colette's writing, including an evocative narration voiced by Frears himself. The film looks beautiful with richly colourful costumes and settings from Lea's pretty little house with its shutters, flowers and wrought iron balconies to the ornate parlour of Mme Peloux. It combines delicacy, sophistication, wit and passion with a lovely sense of period and French worldliness in its depiction of the comfortable but enclosed lifestyle of the "grandes horizontales", kept in luxury by the powerful men they entertained but cut of from the mainstream of society.
Up and coming actor Friend shows another side of his versatility, sporting a somewhat Byronic hairdo as the spoilt, petulant, immature but endearingly vulnerable Cheri. Even towards the end of the affair, when he is 25, one is still very aware of his youth. Despite the difference in their ages, his affair with Lea is convincing and touching, because Pfeiffer, now 50 is still so beautiful, with just a few lines round the eyes indicating her mature years. The genuineness of their affection is highlighted and contrasted in a scene at one of Peloux's soirées, when we come up against the other, sleazier side of this world in the person an old and less well preserved courtesan flirting coarsely with her young prince/patron.
Pfeiffer is elegant, controlled and stylish throughout and very moving in the scenes where she reveals her emotions. A problem arises though with her perfect beauty towards the end of the film, when we see her through Cheri's eyes as the older woman she is. The sequence is still moving but not totally convincing, as despite a few unflattering camera tricks, she's still lovely enough to capture any young man's heart. Bates gives a good performance as the manipulative, bitter and rather sad Peloux. The elegant concealed bitchery of the conversations between her and Léa is very enjoyable. Jones makes as much as she's able of the role of Cheri's mostly silent young bride and there's an impressive supporting chorus of ageing courtesans, who include Anita Pallenberg, Harriet Walter, Iben Hjejle and Bette Bourne.
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