An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Unlikely lovers: Chéri (Rupert Friend) and Lea de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer)
It isn’t easy to translate the defiantly non-chronological writing of Colette to the screen and Stephen Frears, assisted by the screenplay of Christopher Hampton, hasn’t done it with complete success. What he has managed is a sumptuous vision of the Belle Epoque, further decorated by a performance from Michelle Pfeiffer as the courtesan Lea de Lonval. If looks alone could kill, it might be a dead ringer for another Oscar nomination to add to the one she received for the memorable Dangerous Liaisons.
At 50, she seems more beautiful than ever and an actress with a few more strings to her bow, too. Lea is not all that far removed from Glenn Close’s sexually ruthless Madame de Merteuil in Liaisons, and her burgeoning love for the sulky and irresponsible young Chéri (Rupert Friend), which is the kernel of the book and of the film, is given more bite and depth as time passes.
What Dangerous Liaisons didn’t have was the director’s own voiceover. Frears gives us a series of clues about Paris in the early 20th century and the motivations of his characters, as if we need a bit of history to understand both the period and them the better. I didn’t find this jarred unduly, but it did occasionally prove to underline the chief flaw in the film. Frears encourages too much laughter and the tone of what should be a minor tragedy about an ageing woman and a young man who eventually finds he has no place in a fading world is thereby weakened.
Frears also allows Kathy Bates to go well over the top as Charlotte Peloux, the plump ex-courtesan who announces that Chéri is to be married off to the 18-year-old daughter of another lady of easy virtue. She’s entertaining, but not quite the woman Colette imagined.
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Friend is never less than adequate as Chéri, a character towards whom we are unlikely to warm. But it is Pfeiffer’s film, as she struggles first with an unlikely love and then against the inevitable ravages of age and disappointment.
What nobody could question is cinematographer Darius Khondji’s rich colouring, Alan MacDonald’s impeccable design and Consalata Boyle’s fine costumes. Nor could Alexandre Desplat’s melancholy score be bettered.
Chéri looks a real treat, which is half the battle. It may not quite give the measure of Colette, nor Frears at his absolute best, but you don’t have to look at it through rose-tinted glasses to luxuriate in its splendour.
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