Chéri
Chéri is the latest movie directed by Stephen Frears and is based on the novel by Colette. The novel Chéri is Collette’s most popular book as it accounts familiar lives with a distant regret. The success of the movie lies essentially on its castings with Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea de Lonval and the character of Chéri is portrayed by Rupert Friend.
Both are accomplished actors and their performance is reflected in the brilliance of the movie.
The film is all about concealed feelings, dark fears and of insinuation and nuance. In Collete’s novel, in the beginning, the character Lea de Lonval presents her lover a necklace of 49 pearls. Her lover is 24 years younger than her. The 49 pearls definitely symbolize her age and her lover was 25.
Six years have passed by and in a way Chéri is now 31 and Lea de Lonval is 55. The things are not same anymore although they were meant to be just perfect lovers with one another yet they were destined to be born on different days.
The film unfolds with Lea as a courtesan with lots of money and living life of utter luxury. Chéri is son of Charlotte Peloux another courtesan. Charolotte Peloux is the role portrayed by Kathy Bates. Both, Charlotte and Lea were friends for several years. But as courtesans are, they are rich and famous but they cannot simply speak their heart out as women.
However, it was evident that Lea was very much in the life of Fred who was called lovingly Chéri by one and all. It was one day Madam Peloux walks to Lea and tells him you take my son and what she does not say is I am giving you the boy; you give me back the man.
As the plot unravels it was understood that Chéri was not virgin, all he needed was reins on his desires but he was assumingly and willingly accepting Lea’s saddle. From the point of lovemaking it was love and they seemed floating in the ocean of perfumed world of perfect comfort.
As far as courtesans were concerned, there were two things that they simply could not afford to do-one is to fall in love and the other is to reveal what she is thinking. However Lea felt to hold on to the first thing and you will find that she eventually falls into love with Chéri.
On the other side audience need not to e told anymore as what happens in the movie. This is because people know how ruthless Chéri can be when it is needed. But we all should be contented to know that Lea knew it then while Chéri realizes it later that what transpired between them was irreplaceable and invaluable. This movies is not a tearjerker but definitely is an account of events that can happen when people choose to toy around with their hearts.
Collette is a great author. One can internalize Shakespeare as was done by Donald Richie but he could not do that with Collette’s works. He had to move Collette’s books with him wherever he went. Collette died in the year 1954 when she was 81. Her unfaithful husband was abandoned by her and she supported herself by writing and as a music hall performer. She was in the company of many courtesans during that era. Chéri is simply not the work of her imagination.
However, the credit of the film definitely goes to the director and the screen writer as it is very difficult to put into celluloid Collette’s works. Her works mostly reflects hidden emotion. Additionally, the success is justly shared by some awesome performance of the actors. It is simply fascinating to watch the emotional changes portrayed by Pfeiffer.
The emotional scenes happen offscreen and they reach the audience by the narrator. Rightfully audience will realize that some events don’t happen to people, those things happen about them.
Film: Chéri
Cast: Michael Pfeiffer as Lea, Rupert Friend as Chéri, Kathy Bates as Pelox, Stephen Frears as Narrator
Director: Stephen Frears
Run time: 1 hour and 32 minutes
Rating: 3.5/5
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Posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 6:01 pm