Chéri
by Chris Knipp

Chéri is a product of the great English team that created the brilliant Choderlos de Laclos adaptation Dangerous Liasons (1988), Christopher Hampton the writer, as prolific as he is adept at turning French texts into English movies or plays, and Stephen Frears the director, who brought us such greatness as (to name a few): The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things, The Grifters, Prick Up Your Ears, and the novelistically rich bisexual story of Pakistanis and Cockneys in London, My Beautiful Laundrette. This new film, moreover, is graced by the presence of, in the central part of Colette's aging courtesan Léa de Lonval, Michelle Pfeiffer, who had the major part of Madame de Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons. Again this is a movie where French people speak English, but that worked before, and it works again here.

It's two decades later and Hampton, Frears, and Pfeiffer, though they show no sign of waning gifts, don't quite bring back the magic; but still Chéri, adapted from two 1920's short novels by Colette (not as strong material as de Laclos' epistolary novel), is nicely paced and gorgeous to look at, and Michelle is a wondrously beautiful fifty-year-old and still a delicious actress. Rupert Friend, as Léa's young beau Fred Peloux, nicknamed Chéri, isn't too hard on the eyes either as the young man, though he's a bit difficult to accept as a 19-year-old at first (then the study jumps forward to six years later). Friend is actually around 27, and for this role, a decidedly decadent-looking 27 at that.

But decadent is what the part calls for. Chéri himself is the son of an extremely rich courtesan. Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates, in elaborate late 19th-century garb, playing broadly enough to be Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest) has spoiled the boy rotten, he is completely lazy, and she turns him over to Léa for training. This he might have got, except that they belie all but dime novel expectations and fall madly in love with each other and remain together for six years, whereupon Chéri suddenly decides to get married, to Edmée (Felicity Jones), the daughter of another courtesan who has done well off her lovers, and from then on things get complicated. All through the six years of the relationship Léa so adores Chéri, she hasn't the detachment to train him and just lets him do what he wants.

Art Nouveau curlicues swirl throughout this beautifully designed film, and Pfeiffer's looks and costumes are marvels of new deco tastes: the story runs from the end of the Belle Époque to WWI. Relationships with several servants become important as they are chatted up and asked for advice, which sometimes they are smart enough not to give. Urban gardens are absolutely lush in the nineteenth-century manner, and all the visuals manage to be impossibly rich without being too distracting. But it all begins and ends with the casting, and though Bates' broadness might be obtrusive, it isn't, because her role is relatively small. Rupert Friend is wonderfully pale and sickly looking, yet sexy. Chéri is spoiled, and a bit androgynous, as indicated by his constant desire to wear Léa's pearl necklace, which he says looks just as good on him.

Chéri soon tires of his wife, who at eighteen seems indecently young to him. We know what's going to happen. The only flaw of this enjoyable adaptation is that it happens too fast and the emotional complications don't come across as powerfully as they might, especially when we think of the ending of Dangerous Liaisons with Glenn Close's devastating collapse in the theater. In their effort to fuse together the two Colette Chéri novels, Hampton and Frears rush through the latter stages of the story. They also have a bit of trouble with tone. Having started out in a light comic vein, they aren't altogether able to modulate into the darker moods of emotional confusion, disenchantment, and fear of aging.

The latter is the issue Léa faces all along. Michelle Pfeiffer's lovely but no longer young face, photographed in complimentary lights and then somewhat more cruel ones, tells a rich, thought-provoking tale that helps compensate for shortcomings in this generally buoyant and entertaining adaptation.

©2009 Chris Knipp
CineScene