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Collette (2018) *
Movie Review One of
Keira Knightley's best performances
Nell Minow,
rogerebert.com September 21, 2018
Formally familiar but a brilliant match for its
lead, Colette is a thoroughly entertaining biopic and an overdue testament to
Keira Knightley's underrated gifts. --Rotton Tomatoes
But the chemistry is palpable between
Knightley and West, whether they are in love
or estranged, and Knightley gives one of her best performances as a girl with
spirit and talent who becomes a woman with ferocity and a
voice.
In “Colette,”
based on the life of the foremost female French novelist, Giles Nuttgens’ gorgeous cinematography invites us
into the lush, candle-lit world of late 19th century France, contrasting the
thick greenery outdoors of the countryside with the highly decorated interiors
of Paris.
Both
locations are seductively lavish, not in terms of the money spent by the people
who live there, but in the wealth of lived-in detail bathed in soft, golden
light. Colette herself, played by
Keira Knightley, is in increasingly
stark contrast to both settings, too curious and independent-minded for the
quiet life of the country, too honest and unconfined for the conventions of the
city.
We first see her as a young woman, then known as
Sidonie-Gabrielle “Gaby”
Colette, barely out of school. Her hair is in long braids and
she appears to abide by her mother’s strict rules, though not without some
grumbling.
A man named Willy (Dominic West) visits from the city and presents
her with a gift, a snow globe of the new Paris attraction, the Eiffel Tower. She
accepts it politely, but then we see that their relationship is not the kindly
uncle figure and shy schoolgirl her parents think, when after he leaves for the
train she goes for “a walk.” That is what she tells her mother
(Fiona Shaw). But her
“walk” is straight to the barn, where she and Willy have a
joyous romp in the literal hay. “Your hair is a
phenomenon,” he tells her. She is a girl without a dowry, she reminds
him.

But soon they are married, and
the country girl finds herself in the middle of the Paris arts community,
letting those who might think of her as unsophisticated know that she is bright,
brave, and eager to be a part of what is going on. A snobbish
acquaintance, hearing Willy is married, says, “The wild days are done, eh?” and Gaby
replies with asperity, “On the contrary, the wild days have
just begun.” That is truer than she knows. She expected that being
married to Willy would make her “so entire
and happy,” and for a while, it does. And then it does not.
When Willy can no longer afford to pay his
authors, he asks Gaby to write a novel with “enough
literature for the highbrows enough filth for the great unwashed—or vice
versa.” He rejects her first draft as not having enough plot and being
“too feminine.” But then he puts his name on her story of
Claudine, a teenage girl. It becomes a sensation because of its
unprecedented honesty in presenting the perspective of a young woman.
Willy pushes Gaby to write sequels, even
locking her in a room until she produces more
pages.
Willy betrays Gaby as a
wife: he explains constant infidelity is just how men are and she has to get
used to it. And he betrays her as a writer: she begins to believe her own name should be on the Claudine
books, which are not just her perspective, but also her own
experiences.
She begins to work out what is going on in the
present through the books, telling Willy, “I’m planning on killing Reynaud [the Willy character] off in the
next one,” and reminding him of his own statement that “the hand that holds the pen writes the history.”
Willy does his best to keep Gaby, who now
wants to be known as Colette, as the
young country girl he first met, even asking her to dress in Claudine’s
schoolgirl uniform. But she becomes more independent, having a long-term affair
with one of the many young women who insist, “I’m the real
Claudine.”
Colette learns to dance and act and
begins to perform on the stage. She has affairs with women (one of whom also has
an affair with Willy). And she fights to put her name on her
work.
The film struggles with the same challenge in all movies about
writers: there is nothing less cinematic than someone sitting at a desk with
brow furrowed, putting words together, even when it is with an elegant fountain
pen in a gorgeous belle époque setting. It would have given the story more
depth, especially for American audiences, who may vaguely only know that
Colette wrote the story that
inspired “Gigi,” to provide more of a sense of her work, its
frankness and modernity.
But the chemistry is
palpable between Knightley and West, whether
they are in love or estranged, and Knightley gives one of her best performances
as a girl with spirit and talent who becomes a woman with ferocity and a
voice.
Delicious
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