Period pains

A strong cast and interesting themes can’t
save Chéri from Merchant-Ivory mediocrity

MILF PARADE: Chéri

by MALCOLM FRASER

An adaptation of two French literary classics by early 20th-century author Colette, set in the “belle époque” of pre-WWI France, Chéri is journeyman director Stephen Frears’s first feature since hitting middlebrow pay-dirt with The Queen. It’s also a reunion of sorts with Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons collaborators, star Michelle Pfeiffer and screenwriter Christopher Hampton. Pfeiffer plays Léa de Lonval, a retired courtesan who strikes up a tumultuous romance with Chéri (Rupert Friend), the dandy son of her contemporary and rival Charlotte (Kathy Bates).

In the age of MILFs and cougars, Pfeiffer’s role as an over-the-hill sexpot hooking up with a teen boy toy has some contemporary resonance to go along with the titillation value. The question of what a woman can or should do in her later years after basing her whole career, persona and self-esteem entirely on youth and beauty is also, of course, not irrelevant in the Girls Gone Wild era.

Pfeiffer, who still looks pretty great (if a little gaunt), shines when her character finds herself dropping the mask of cougarrific fabulousness and silently confronting her age and mortality—these moments add up to quite a bravura performance. Bates is great as usual, showing off another angle of her trademark versatility, and Friend holds his own as the spoiled, decadent son—a sort of trust-fund hipster of his day.

The premise is interesting enough, but unfortunately, Frears and Hampton don’t seem to be interested in subverting, deepening or updating the period-piece genre. With its plot about an ill-fated romance with a dandy, the film inevitably recalls last year’s The Last Mistress. But where that film was raw, intense, subversive and visceral (perhaps unsurprisingly coming from director Catherine Breillat and star Asia Argento), this one is apparently content to wallow in the genre’s conventions, with copious décor porn, plot twists predicated on the subtleties of class politics and oh-so-witty turn-of-the-century banter.

If you’re a fan of the Merchant-Ivory school of period drama, where the dialogue is as floridly over-the-top as the costumes and production design, this is right up your alley. But apart from the thematic angles arising from the retired-hooker premise, this doesn’t bring much new to the table.

CHÉRI OPENS THIS FRIDAY, JUNE 26