Michelle Pfeiffer is beautiful
Added 11/18/2009
This movie reminds me of the song by Cracker, Teen Angst, 'what the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in the head.' In this case, does the world really need another period piece film?
Michelle Pfeiffer plays a retired prostitute in 1890's France (oh yes the film uses the word courtesan to make it sound better, but we might as well call it like it is) that falls in love with her best friend's 18 or 19 year old son Fred, nicknamed Cheri. They spend six years together during 15 minutes of the film. The rest of the film is all about how much they loved each other but could not be together. Oh the unrequited love story, if it just weren't for society, they could live blissfully together forever.
The cast is interesting. Michelle Pfeiffer is so gorgeous in this film. Nobody has a right to be this beautiful and have such a gorgeous body at 51 years old. The revealing scenes are artfully done. Kathy Bates, to me, was perfectly cast as another retired prostitute, Cheri's mother. Compared to all the other characters in this film, an old man dressed up in drag, an absolutely hideous massive woman, and the other assorted old 'courtesans', she fit in perfectly. Rupert Friend plays Cheri, a skinny long haired young man.
Across the board the acting was horrible. Everyone read their lines. There was very little emotion in anything they said. It is entirely possible the script was the problem. The film was translated from two French novels by Collette. There are phrases in French that work very well, but when translated literally turn into needlessly complex English. At one point Michelle Pfeiffer says something to the effect of; oh one must not do this because one will... A perfectly wonderful phrase in French, using the 'on' noun to mean literally one, but more generally we or us. In English, it becomes a horrible phrase.
Film director, Stephen Frears (High Fidelity), reads the most annoying voice over narration ever used in a film. Every piece of a film should add to the enjoyment or illumination of a film. Music, sound effects, editing, framing, and dialog, when used properly are incredibly powerful. In this case, the voice over story telling added nothing to the film, it mostly detracted. In addition, Frears does not have the most pleasant voice.
The sets are gorgeous. The film does not show much of Paris, although parts do take place there. No this is not a film with gorgeous views of Paris. Mostly the film takes place in the French countryside, but the credits show that it was filmed in Germany. The beach scenes in Biarritz are beautiful. I'm not sure if I watched the same film others have reported, but there were no sumptuous views of Paris and gorgeous Belle Époque scenery. There were some very lovely homes, gardens, and countryside; but not much of Paris at all.
Sadly this film natters on far too long, after 30 minutes of the 90 minute movie I wanted to find the fast forward button (I did resist and suffered through the full 90 minutes). I had absolutely no emotional connection with any of these characters. The dialog annoyed me. The only saving grace was seeing how well the beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer has aged.
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Forgettable
Added 11/14/2009
I was expecting more from this, and I think with better direction and a few casting changes it could have been a decent movie. Michelle Pfieffer is glorious as the older courtesan (Lea) who falls in love with the aimless 19 year old Cheri, son of a rival aging courtesan (played by Kathy Bates). The relationship between Lea and Cheri (Rupert Friend) is never developed properly in the beginning - in fact it feels quite rushed and forced, so you never get a sense of connection between these two from the start. They also have virtually nothing in the way of on-screen chemistry. Rupert Friend turns in a one-dimensional portrait of a dark and brooding Cheri...the other actors, with the exception of Kathy Bates, are instantly forgettable. Shame too because the staging is lovely and this is probably one of Pfieffer's best performances. Overdubbed narration offers entirely unncessary commentary on what's going on in the minds of the characters, and utterly undermines every attempt the film makes to build and maintain a sense of real drama. Don't bother with it.
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Pfffffttttt!!!!
Added 10/30/2009
I don't think the other reviewers listed here saw the same movie as I did. "Cheri" is boring, boring, boring!
As a period piece, it is much more like the cheesy, soft-core productions that came from photographer David Hamilton than quality stuff like Merchant and Ivory.
The plot and the performances practically define the word "ENNUI". In the early scenes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend do such a good job parroting the same accent, that the scenes between them nearly sound like monologues.
It doesn't matter to me that the source material was Colette, by the middle of the movie I was asleep. I kept expecting Mel Brooks to charge onto the screen behind Michelle Pfeiffer, bellowing "CAN'T YOU SEE SHE'S POOPED?!!"
Unless you are in need of a sedative, avoid this movie like the plague.
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A CLASSIC TALE RETOLD
Added 10/28/2009
This movie is about a certain social milieu of the Golden Age of Paris (the early 1900s). It is the Americanization of Colette but it works for a more mainstreamed audience. A more serious adaptation would be NC-17, at least, and the subject matter in this movie never becomes that risqué.
We meet a great beauty nearing the end of her career as a courtesan in Paris. We meet a lot of other aging courtesans as well, one of them the unscrupulous mother of a handsome young man nicknamed Cheri. Everyone knows they are having an affair but it is only too late that the main characters realize that they also fell in love. This story has been told several times and this rendition is very good. I felt the pain of the aging beauty having to let go a much younger love. I felt the aimlessness of Cheri as he leads a pampered life that cannot fulfill him. Yes, it's a classic tragic tale but is it worth watching? If you are a fan of star-crossed lovers or period pieces - absolutely!
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Sanitized Colette
Added 10/25/2009
Stephen Frears has created some powerful and very well crafted movies: 'Dangerous Liaisons', 'My Beautiful Laundrette', 'The Grifters', 'The Queen', 'Prick up your Ears', 'Dirty Pretty Things', etc. One would expect that his experience in dealing with edgy issues would make him the perfect choice for adapting the famous French writer of 'naughty novels' - Colette - but somewhere in the flow of this production, perhaps in the Christopher Hampton's adaptation of the novel to screenplay, the original stories become perfumed and sanitized. And the reasons why this happened remain obscure.
The story is simple: courtesans in Paris must eventually retire form their lives of becoming wealthy through pleasing men of the higher class, and either they live out their lives in the luxuries of fluff or they must confront their aging and feel pangs of remorse as they end their lives alone, without a man to bolster them. Lea de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) has been longtime 'friends' with Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates), even to the point of nurturing Madame's son Chéri (Rupert Friend) as he approaches manhood. Madame asks Lea to 'polish' Chéri for other women and after what might have been a brief fling in Normandy, the young Chéri and the aging Lea fall into a six year relationship. But as Madame realizes she needs grandchildren, she eventually finds a proper girl Edmee (Felicity Jones) for Chéri to marry. The remainder of the story is how these two age-disparate characters adapt to the 'social rules' of La Belle Epoque, suggesting that even under extraordinary circumstances the power of love is an issue that must be confronted.
Despite the performances by Pfeiffer and Friend (and even the miscast Bates) the story feels somehow sterile. Perhaps it is the out of place use of a male narrator who gives the film an unnecessary feeling of being a documentary, or the somewhat overused musical score of Alexandre Desplat, or the emphasis on costumes that hardly add to the beauty of Pfeiffer as Lea that keep the production grounded. It is a pleasant enough film, but hardly a memorable one. Grady Harp, October 09
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