Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Chéri almost works. In this May-December tale involving an aging prostitute and Chéri, the young, wan son of another aging prostitute, the parts don’t quite cohere into a successful whole. But that doesn’t negate the film’s titillating, weirdly elegant period-piece twists and sometimes-entrancing scenery.
Given the gray zone between concept and finished result, viewers may experience waves of slight frustration, but never boredom. That may be because director Stephen Frears seems incapable of making a dull film, and he has shown a flair for summoning up surprising gracefulness into dark narrative terrain, as in The Grifters and Dangerous Liaisons. The latter film most closely resembles his new one, and out of its cast, Frears called on the underused and secretly fine actress Michelle Pfeiffer, now many years the wiser.
At its best, Frears’s film occupies some fresh space in the crowded and usually mediocre field of life at the movies, getting at something new onscreen by drawing on something old. The novels by Colette (famous for Gigi), from which Christopher Hampton concocted the amicable, moodily chatty script, lodges us in the world of French prostitutes—courtesans—in 1920s Paris, in the transitional period of French Belle Époque. Likewise, a queasy, seductive sense of slipping between realities and societal norms is at the core of the troubled love in this story.
As Lea de Lonval, Pfeiffer is loved by the camera, and carefully presented in varying lights, literally and dramatically. Her cynical young lover is expertly played by Rupert Friend, the sole-eyed debaucher who looks like a young Jimmy Page and who falls prey to the nuisance of a nagging love in spite of himself.
Despite the atmospheric wiles of the film, distractions get in the way of a good and cohesive time onscreen, starting with the accent issue. Both Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates (with her usual knowing and smug charms intact) wriggle between American and vaguely European lilt in their accents, fogging up the project’s veracity. Then again, veracity is less important than vibe here, and Frears again wins points for expanding cinema’s vocabulary, creating a period piece against type and a story in which well-dressed ennui and assorted flavors of eroticism drift through like timeless but hard-to-place scents.
For showtimes, check the Independent's movie listings, here.