Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Wordiezett So much average

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

bwanabrad-1 A film that fails to ignite much interest. Not for the first time in recent memory Pfeiffer plays the older woman in love with a younger man, in this case one much younger. Scorsese and Pfeiffer covered some of this same territory in The Age of Innocence, and to much better effect. She is a courtesan, he the son of another famous courtesan. He has led an indolent life, spoiled throughout his entire existence. As a result he has grown to manhood completely divorced from any feelings for anyone. Instead he allows himself to be forced into a hastily arranged marriage by his ambitious mother, to a young woman he neither loves nor cares for. He is indifferent to his wife and drifts back and forth between the two women.The script is pretty nondescript in places. Pfeiffer has a few decent lines and still radiates enough screen presence to carry some scenes, and Bates matches her well. Most of the problems with this film are based on the male character Cheri (Friend). He is left with too little too late for us to care about his fate. lnstead he allows himself to have his opinions formed for him by his mother and and Lea who also does much of what passes for thinking on his behalf as well. He is married off to a woman he doesn't love, and then proceeds to drift between her and his lover without ever showing any real sense of commitment to either. Due to the limitations of the script and his character, he comes across as only half formed, and too many scenes end with him staring blankly into the camera, looking quite vacuous, and a penny for his thoughts would be an understatement of inflation. lt is not easy to know which audience this movie is aimed at. It is not quite glamorous enough to be mainstream nor is it memorable enough to be art-house. As a result it meanders along without ever really being anything more than an exercise in self indulgence. That is a pity as l was expecting a fair bit more from those involved.

David Traversa Aging, Michelle Pfeiffer has become what Oscar Wilde called "That abomination of nature: A Handsome Woman". Her very trimmed figure looks spectacular sheathed in very glamorous Belle Epoque dresses and looking at her with contemporary eyes, that's fine.What the director forgot in recreating so beautifully, so painfully all the paraphernalia necessary to reproduce that magnificent time in history was... the ideal of feminine beauty at the time.We glaringly see it in the same old pictures (authentic) shown at the start of the movie, pictures of the great beauties then, like Lillie Langtry, Lia de Putti, la Bella Otero, etc. and it's obvious that those beauties where more on the side of Marilyn Monroe than Michelle Pfeiffer, who looks like a window display mannequin with no curves in the right places and no minimal waistline (Hourglass figure painfully obtained thanks to an oppressing corset, but there it was).To give us total recall of that time our protagonist should have been somebody a bit fatter than Ms. Pfeiffer, since we readily forget all the changes the feminine figure has suffered just in the last 100 years; what was considered fashionable or desirable then was quite different from now, and a thin woman was totally undesirable.The film is nice, in a very superficial way, since its main flaw is irreparable, because speaking English in this superbly French story, we get a jarring note, and it's this: All the "decadent" morality, social behavior, points of view about richly kept elegant cocottes by the upper class French men is something totally unknown to puritan Victorian English society. This utterly French "Menage a Trois" is totally lost in this English version of Paris life at the turn of the century.The house where she lives, the street, the interior locations, the dresses, all that is perfectly fine (more than fine, exquisite), but THE ESENCE of Colette masterpiece is not there. Due to the strong visual appeal in interiors, color schemes, Art Nuveau architecture and Belle Epoque fashions, this is mainly eye candy for dress designers and interior decorators.

TxMike This story is curiously set in France with two American actors using British accents. So it is in the magic fantasy land of the movies. Set in the late 19th century, a time when becoming a Courtesan, an elite prostitute, was an alternative for young women. Michelle Pfeiffer was about 50 when the filming was done and it appears she is playing a Courtesan about 50, Lea de Lonval. Courtesans, while acknowledged as a legitimate profession, didn't really mix with the rest of society during their non-working hours, and Lea's closest friend was Kathy Bates as Madame Peloux. They didn't really like each other that much, but they shared a bond. Before I saw the movie I assumed the title referred to Pfeiffer's character, but in fact it was Rupert Friend as Chéri, a name Lea gave to him when he was growing up. He was the son of Madame Peloux, and of unknown father, and was 19 as this story begins. While I enjoyed this movie, I find it mostly forgettable. It is a type of movie I am very optional towards.SPOILERS: As Cheri needed some companionship, Lea became to fill that role. She thought they would be together for a few weeks, but that turned into 6 years. They were lovers. But Madame Peloux decided she needed grandchildren and arranged a marriage of her son, Cheri, now 25, to a young woman of 18. But he never really took to her, Lea was always on his mind. As he was on her mind. But in the end she convinced him their love, while real, could not lead to anything.

lastliberal Let's see; Michelle Pfeiffer is 51, and Rupert Friend is 28. A typical cougar relationship, except there were no cougars in the late 19th Century France, during the Belle Epoque.This is a period of excess and Lea de Lonval (Pfeiffer) is living on her earnings, and she is teaching Cheri (Friend). the son of a friend (Kathy Bates), a fellow retired prostitute, about life. After six years of companionship, she has grown attached to Cheri, and is dismayed to learn his mother wants him married to the daughter (Felicity Jones) of another prostitute (Iben Hjejle).It is definitely a period piece with lavish costumes and sumptuous living, and emotions the rule of the day.What should have been a French film is decidedly English, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.