Chéri
- Szczegóły
- Nadrzędna kategoria: Filmy
- Kategoria: Recenzje filmowe z Guardiana
- Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian, Friday 8 May 2009
Michelle Pfeiffer deserved the finest vehicle for her comeback. This is the film-equivalent of a knackered Trabant with four bald tyres and a farting exhaust.
Not even Stephen Frears's talents can save it; he directs and supplies a gravelly voiceover to this desperately creaky and stately adaptation of the Colette novels Chéri (1920) and La Fin de Chéri (1926) set in belle époque Paris just before the first world war. Sitting through this stuffy and over-furnished film is like being slowly deprived of oxygen. (In fact, Dignitas is probably shipping a crate of Chéri DVDs to its Swiss clinic even as you read this.)
Elegant courtesan Léa de Lonval (Pfeiffer), ageing but still beautiful, conceives a desperate passion for an exquisite boy she calls Chéri (Rupert Friend), whose sentimental education she originally agreed to undertake as a favour to Chéri's mother, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). The cast look like tailor's dummies in period garb being wheeled around on castors while they deliver their fantastically unwitty lines in a simpery-dimply way. A genteel-middlebrow nightmare.
castor - kółko (mebla)
conceive - tu: poczuć
courtesan - kurtyzana
creaky - zgrzytający, skrzypiący
deprived of - pozbawiony
exquisite - śliczny
garb - strój
genteel-middlebrow - dystyngowany, afektowany i niewymagający myślenia
gravelly - zgrzytliwy
knackered - zarżnięty
simpery-dimply - z głupkowatym uśmieszkiem, kokieteryjnie
stately - dostojny
stuffy - duszny, formalny, staroświecki
tailor's dummy - manekin krawiecki
undertake - podejmować