Molière

[Shale]

Molière
Review by Shale
August 18, 2007

Writing movie reviews is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends on the Web and finally you do it for money.

Shale, still doin' it for the love of it and for a few friends.

Those are not entirely Shale's words but a paraphrase of Molière's words on writing. I once quoted his words in the front of my self-published, limited edition booklet, "Nude Attitude" in 1995, which was written for a few nudist friends and nominally sold thru our naturist club.

I had never heard of Molière, the French dramatist and actor (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673), whose words in the misquote above came to me from a writer friend. So, I almost felt obligated to go see the movie Molière. Besides, I'm always up for a costume drama, having recently seen Becoming Jane, a based on an, it-coulda-happened story.

This speculative story covers a time of several month's when Molière (Romain Duris) dropped out of sight after being sprung from debtors' prison by a wealthy merchant, Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini). Here's the situation: Jourdain wants Molière, a young actor to help him impress a local aristocrat, Marquise Celimene (Ludivine Sagnier) a beautiful young woman who caught his fancy.

Molière Taunting Marquise Celimene


Jourdain has been secretly giving money to another aristocrat, Dorante (Edouard Baer) to get him in good graces with Celimene, but the cad is just taking him. Molière, plays a priest named Tartuffe who is supposedly at the Jourdain estate to tutor their youngest daughter but he is smitten himself by Jourdain's beautiful and worldly wife, Elmire (Laura Morante). Sort of a story about who's playing 'round with your ol' lady, while you been out playin' 'round.

Molière and Elmire Kiss


The whole story gets more complicated, as Jourdain's oldest daughter is being betrothed to the cad aristocrat's son even though she is in love with another young man, and Molière conspires with Elmire to prevent her daughter's arranged marriage for the father to gain nobility and the "noble" to gain money.

All of these intrigues play out in a very amusing situation comedy, set in mid 17th Century France where we are led to believe Libertine values were the norm.

Molière in Bed with Elmire - She Taught Him to Laugh


Of course I enjoyed the flick a lot. It was well acted, had a good story, costumes, props, and scenery; and it was funny. There was also enough real drama and character development to make you think it could be a real look at Molière's early life, how he learned from the older Elmire to hone his craft and gain insights that would later influence his plays and comedies, such as The Misanthrope and Tartuffe.

Oh, BTW, maybe I should read up on these things before going to a movie but I don't mind an occasional surprise. This movie was not only about a great French writer, with great French actors but it was actually in French, with English subtitles. Fortunately, the French use a lot more words than they need to say something, so it wasn't too much reading during the dialogue.

I would give it a 2 DVD. In fact, gonna go looking for Shakespeare in Love on DVD to watch again.

Shale's movie rating scale:
0 DVD No I would not waste my money or time seeing this movie again.
1 DVD I would get this DVD for $5 or $7
2 DVD I would get this DVD for $10
3 DVD I would get this DVD for $15
4 DVD I would get this DVD for $25 as soon as it was released.

[Jorrit]

I'm glad you're still doing it for free