Colette (2018)

Jack and I thoroughly enjoyed this bio-pic/coming of age story about the groundbreaking French author (1873-1954). Keira Knightley is terrific in the title role (she was last blogged for The Imitation Game) and Fiona Shaw (I loved My Left Foot (1989), The Butcher Boy (1997), Fracture (2007), and eight episodes of Killing Eve, among her many credits) wonderful as her mother Sido. I was a little confused about their relationship, since she called her parents by their first names. Just more aspects of the unconventionality of the character, whose full name was Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette before she decided to go by her surname. As Colette's opinionated and arrogant husband Willy (AKA Henri Gauthier-Villars), Dominic West (most recently in these pages for one of the 2018 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts) is perfectly cast.

Those who have seen the trailer or read up on the subject know that Colette had flings with women. Two of them are in this movie: Eleanor Tomlinson (last blogged for Loving Vincent) as Georgie from America and Denise Gough (she was in '71 and Juliet, Naked, though I failed to say so) as Missy.

The story chugs along at a satisfying pace--I never once thought of places it needed trimming, thanks to the script by director Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer, and Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Westmoreland and Glatzer co-directed and co-wrote Still Alice and Lenkiewicz co-wrote Disobedience). The story is credited to Glatzer, Westmoreland's husband, who died of ALS in 2015.

The early scenes in this movie of our teenage heroine and her older soon-to-be-husband did remind me of Colette's story of Gigi (I saw it on Broadway as well as the movie). Maybe that's why I thought Sido was not her mother, since Gigi lived with an older woman not her mother. Colette also wrote the books on which the movie Chéri was based.

Below-the-line kudos to costume designer Andrea Flesch (new to me), production designer Michael Carlin (Oscar-nominated for The Duchess, which also starred Knightley in the title role), and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens (last blogged for Hell or High Water) for the beautiful scenes shot in Budapest, Paris, and the United Kingdom.

The lovely classical score by opera composer Thomas Adès in his feature debut isn't available online, but you can read this list of songs or listen to some of his other work.

We're even more enthusiastic than Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, who are averaging 86 and 74%, respectively, and we urge you to see this. The spoken words are all in English, though shots of her writing are in French.