Cheri

Cheri

92 Minutes






In the late 1800s Europe was living the Belle Epoque -- well, at least the upper crust were living the beautiful life until 1914 when World War I changed everyone's direction. Part of that fortunate spoiled layer included the courtesans thanks to their wealthy and loyal clients. This golden age emerged as the result of the advent of new technology, cheap labor and a lengthy period of peace among the major European powers. Cheri chronicles the adventures of Lea de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) who, in the twilight of her courtesan career and on the cusp of reaching 50, contemplates retirement during this late 19th century. As Paris' most admired mistress, Lea believes she has earned the right to sleep alone.

Lea lunches with her retired colleague and manipulative rival, Madame Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates) where she learns that Charlotte has decided that Lea is the only one who can talk some sense into her very handsome but feckless 19-year old son, Fred (Rupert Friend) who Lea nicknamed "Cheri." Charlotte's plan backfires when Cheri turns his boredom into the successful seduction of his mother's nemesis, and at the same time Lea decides to embark on a lark with a boy toy for a while. "A while" turns into six years as the couple unwittingly settles into the comfort of an almost marriage and meeting each other's needs. Lea instructs and mothers Cheri while Cheri quickly learns to bring sexual excitement and youth to Lea. During the first weekend of their relationship, Lea confides in her maid that it is "like being in bed with an African or a Chinese . . . I can't make out his character because he doesn't have one." Unhappy about her son's choice, Charlotte happily unsettles Lea by arranging a marriage for Cheri with Edmee (Felicity Jones), the shy daughter of another aging courtesan. Little did Lea realize that she had fallen more in love with Cheri than she had planned. Cheri goes along with the marriage but pines for Lea.

During this permissive age, France's art and fashion worlds (as well as greed and carnal pleasures) exploded. While Colette's 1920 novel Cheri, based on Colette's own outrageous affair with the famous philosopher and economist, Bertrand de Jouvenel, who was her 18-year old stepson at the time of their tryst, is a highly sensual accounts of this era, director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton missed the mark in representing the intensity of those times and the depth of feelings that should have been uncovered in a directionless teenager and a woman aware of her own lost youth.

Pfeiffer is the perfect choice for this role given her age, amazing beauty, easy elegance and previous association with Frears and Hampton on Dangerous Liaisons, but she came off a bit less vulnerable than her situation would dictate. Although you might expect a hooker to be hardened even in those days, it was still troubling not to relate to Lea's pain. Perhaps it was the intention of Frears to portray the competing strength of a worldly woman as compared to the lack of a backbone in a pampered youth who eventually succumbed to despair, but if so, it was a fuzzy result.

Bates, on the other hand, strikes the perfect tone as the gossipy, needling, ineffective mother who was highly envious of her colleague. Friend is believable as a worthless, childlike man, although we never get a picture of his path to being purposeless or why he preferred to be the wearer of pearls. The best part of this film is the spotty humor, including the perfect timing of the clever, churlish snipes between Lea and Charlotte, and Cheri and his inept mother, all of which were Noel Coward-ish. In fact, this production might make a halfway decent play.

You get the sense that Cheri is a story quickly told by trading depth for visual beauty. There is nothing unique or wholly interesting about this period piece though it did make another rainy afternoon more bearable.

by Jane Hruska