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Dir. Stephen Frears
Rating: 6.1 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
The reuniting of director Stephen Frears, writer Christopher Hampton and actress Michelle Pfeiffer -- in another French period piece, no less -- might at first seem almost too pat, a forced return to glory for the threesome. It has been more than 20 years, after all, since they last explored similar terrain in the excellent Dangerous Liaisons, but rather than deal with the sardonic, Machiavellian Choderlos de Laclos, here they have adapted the even less sentimental Colette, but, alas, lightening does not strike twice. This is not to say they don't get anything right. The use of Pfeiffer -- now in her early 50s, believe it or not -- very much works to their advantage. She plays Lea de Lonval, a near-retired courtesan of the highest order, who has wealth and security in abundance, but very little to actually care about. Enter Cherí (Rupert Friend), a priggish fop born to an equally impressive former courtesan, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). Madame believes her son needs the maturing touch of her friend Lea, who helped raise young Cherí when he was a boy. With her blessing, Lea and Cherí begin a long, storied romance for several years, until Madame begins to seriously desire grandchildren. She has her son married off to the young and beautiful Edmee (Felicity Jones), leaving both Cherí and Lea lost and tormented. As beautiful as Pfeiffer remains, in almost every scene there are distressing signs of her creeping age -- a fact Frears plays to maximum advantage. It is, in many ways, a courageous role for any actress to perform, an admitting of beauty (and plum roles, in feckless Hollywood) fading, and Pfeiffer, who seems to have lost little of her acting chops, nails it. Sad to say, then, that the film is not anywhere near as successful with its titular character. Cherí is an arrogant twit to begin with -- and through a great deal of the film -- before finally being humbled, but Friend is far more successful in rendering the character's haughty self-reverence than he is at making Cherí the least bit vulnerable, a crucial element in the final act. The film saves a good deal of its impact for the last scene, in which Lea and Cherí finally come to terms with one another, but, by then we've already deserted the callous male protagonist. It is with Lea our hearts are lead, and in a final shot reminiscent of Glenn Close angrily stripping off her make up in the end of Liaisons, we stare at her staring at her own aging visage in the mirror, all the heartbreak of the world in her sad eyes.
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