Chéri is a reunion of three of the principals from the
Oscar-winning 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons: director Stephen
Frears, screenwriter Christopher Hampton, and actress Michelle
Pfeiffer. Set in the same part of the world but in the early 20th
century, long after the fall of the aristocracy, Chéri is
a kind of low-stakes, non-offensive version of its forbear. Fairly
Safe Liaison-like Relationships would be more like it.
If Chéri were a cop movie, the premise would be the
detective sergeant whose life is endangered a week before getting his
gold watch. In Chéri, based on a pair of novels by
Colette, Lea de Lonval (Pfeiffer) is an aging whore. (Why beat about
the bush?) Coming off another successful affair, where a rich paramour
kept her flush for a few more years, Lea is enjoying having her bed to
herself. Lea’s future is secure since she’s become independently
wealthy after a career as a very prosperous prostitute, and she’s
starting to think about a life in relaxed retirement. That is, until
her plans are upset when she falls for Chéri (Rupert Friend),
the teenage son of a fellow prosti, Madame Peloux (native Memphian
Kathy Bates). Lea asks her aide, “Beautiful handles, don’t you think,
for such an old vase?” Lea is a great role for the actress who, at 51,
isn’t my older brother’s version of Michelle Pfeiffer.
Cinematographer Darius Khondji finds all the right wrinkles on
Pfeiffer’s face; she has some years on her, but it’s no stretch to
picture her as the hottest commodity in the illicit Parisian nightlife.
I can remember Ladyhawke, after all.
Friend is spot-on as the title character. He’s sexy and beautiful to
the point of boredom in one fell swoon, and his and Lea’s affair is one
of conscientious debauchery. They both know the clock’s ticking on
their relationship, and neither seems able to commit to it in word,
though the card early on in the film saying they’re still together,
“Six years later,” indicates the level of their interest.
Bates steals the show as the pragmatic but fiery retired courtesan
Peloux, who has spent enough years alone in her lavish home to know she
wants grandchildren. Bates brings a mildly catty tone to the picture as
counterpoint to her shiftless son-in-love.
Shot on location in Biarritz, Paris, and Cologne, and with music by
Alexandre Desplat, costume design by Consolata Boyle, art direction by
Denis Schnegg, and the work of Frears, Hampton, Khondji, and the cast,
Chéri attains an elegant whole. It’s an effective tryst
between love and cynicism, the tang of Pommery exciting the taste buds,
until the dramatic dénouement and powerful last shot, when
Chéri becomes something more.