Review: "Colette"

At first blush “Colette” sounds like a retread of the recent wonderful film “The Wife” starring Glenn Close as the wife of a Nobel-winning author who (spoiler alert) actually wrote all of his books.

But in fact “Colette” is more or less the original tale of a long-suffering woman creating great art under her husband’s name, and is based on the historical early life of arguably France’s most celebrated female writer.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) was a simple country girl who married a famous Parisian author some years her senior, Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West), known by his pen name, Willy.

It may seem shocking to us that writing could be published under another person’s name, but as the film makes clear, it was common practice in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (And, as I can personally attest, it still is.)

Willy was a publisher himself who kept a stable of writers working feverishly to crank out stuff under the Willy brand -- generally salacious romances for high-society types. When their finances grow slim and he cannot afford to pay his ghost writers, Willy suggests that Gabrielle dash something off.

Her novel, “Claudine at School,” becomes an overnight sensation, detailing the lascivious thoughts and practices of a 15-year-old schoolgirl from provincial Burgundy. More books followed, chronicling the character’s rise to the Parisian salons and increasingly volatile romances. Willy and Colette become the toast of Paris, until the inevitable resentment over his assuming authorship of the books comes to loggerheads.

West is blowsy and self-pitying as the libertine Willy, suit vests barely able to contain an ample belly, a gray squiggle of goatee dancing off the end of his chin. He’s like a well-meaning but incorrigible walrus who always promises not to steal all the fish, but gives in to his appetites every time.

For him, this means basking in the attention of the French literary world, as well as the attendant feminine attention for a purveyor of socially acceptable smut.

At first decimated by his cheating, Gabrielle soon finds herself indulging her own romantic interests with other women -- with Willy’s blessing and urging. An early affair with a wealthy American socialite (Eleanor Tomlinson) becomes a public sensation, as both Gabrielle and Willy trade turns under her sheets. This provides more fodder for the next novel, of course.

This is where the movie is at its best, exploring how a provincial girl morphs into a worldly woman testing the boundaries of social constraint. Knightley -- who seems not to have aged a line since breaking out 15 years ago -- lets us feel Gabrielle’s surging passions and how they translated into art.

She and Willy enjoy a love/hate relationship, not exactly abusive but certainly controlling. He actually locks her in a room and forces her to write. As time goes on, she casts off more of his yoke, particularly via her long-term relationship with Mathilde de Morny (Denise Gough), a renowned noblewoman who dressed in suits and essentially lived as a man.

It’s almost as if Gabrielle dreamed up a parallel universe of affairs and scandal at Willy’s suggestion, and then they were determined to live out this shared fantasy.

The latter third of “Colette” loses a lot of narrative steam, eventually devolving into what seems like a series of naughty vignettes with little connective tissue between them. New lovers come and go like a theatrical parade.

Gabrielle’s marriage to Willy essentially dissolved over the course of some years, the rights to the Claudine books were sold off and she lived at a near-poverty level, subsisting as a stage actress. Her greatest works -- under her own byline -- came later, including “Gigi,” which had its own cinematic adaptation.

Director Wash Westmoreland (“Still Alice”), who wrote the screenplay with Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Richard Glatzer, struggles (as many filmmakers do) with folding the messy, chaotic ends of a real life into a 1¾-hour movie. The result is an engaging biopic that loses steam.

By the way, I promise you I wrote this review myself, and did not force my wife to do it. Although who knows? Maybe she could’ve done a better job.

Video review: "Beast"

Most actors employ a lot of tricks, but I couldn’t spot any of Jessica Buckley’s in “Beast.” In this revelatory performance, she plays a severely oppressed young woman living under the thumb of family and community expectations who finds a way to break free through a romance with a local undesirable.

Moll lives on a lovely British island, working as a bus guide for tourists. Her older siblings are already married and started families, and it’s not hard to see that her mother (Geraldine James) views her as the disappointment of the family. As the story opens Moll is attending a birthday party, which turns out to be her own, but she’s treated morse as the servant than the guest of honor.

She has a chance encouter with Pascal (Johnny Flynn), an unnerving fellow who spends his days at odd jobs and poaching. They fall into an uneasy romance, which is bothersome to most everyone Moll knows, which is the main thrust of the appeal.

But when local girls start turning up strangled, Pascal becomes the chief suspect. Moll defends him but harbors her own doubts. Her mind starts to fracture, resulting in terrible visions in which she herself is a perpetrator.

It’s an audacious feature film debut for writer/director Michael Pearce, who along with Buckley draws an intimate, unsettling portrait of a young woman who’s been a target all her life. Finally given a chance to express herself, she finds that freedom can become its own prison.

Video extras are unfortunately rather modest. They consist of a gallery of photo stills from the production and a making-of documentary short.

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Review: Beast"

I had never heard of Jessie Buckley before, but I shan't soon forget her after her ravishing, emotionally outsized performance in the erotic thriller, "Beast."

Buckley appeared on one of those "anybody can be a star" TV programs in Great Britain a few years ago, and has since made a name for herself as a singer, stage and TV actress. This is her first starring film role and, if we're lucky, the prelude to many more.

There's a startling immediacy to her screen presence; we don't sense the usual thespian tricks and remove of the craft. Buckley is just there, right in front of us, never hiding.

She plays Moll, the youngest daughter of a well-to-do family living on a picturesque, unnamed British island. When I first glimpsed her, I thought Moll to be a teenager, but that's just how everyone treats her. Geraldine James plays her disciplinarian mother, who views Moll as a mere extension of herself and her household.

Moll's older siblings (Oliver Maltman and Shannon Tarbet) are already married and starting families, so she's expected to stay at home, caring for her dementia-stricken father, and offer endless obedience. She works in the day as a tour bus guide, droning to blue-haired ladies about the island where she's lived her whole life, but which holds no enchantment.

She's upstaged at her own birthday party, and exercises a rare moment of rebellion by sneaking away to a club, dancing until dawn. We sense this may just be the happiest night of Moll's life, until the fellow she's with gets handsy. Luckily Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn) shows up to chase him away, wielding the rifle he's been using to poach rabbits.

Problem is, Pascal is far scarier than the fellow he ran off. With his hollow face etched with scars, framed by scruffy pale hair and beard, blue eyes that stare with unnerving clarity, ragged clothes and hands casually stained with blood, Pascal is like a primordial version of man sprung from the sea, a hunter wandering among the prey.

Moll is instantly captivated by him, and they soon begin a torrid affair that causes much frowning. At first it's just because of tired class divisions -- he wears black jeans to a country club dinner! -- but soon there are whisperings about his sordid past.

More disturbingly, a series of murders is plaguing the isle, one dead girl turning up after another. They've all been raped and suffocated, their mouths stuffed with raw earth. Pascal easily becomes the prime suspect, and by extension Moll becomes a target herself for the community's ire.

Clifford (Trystan Gravelle), a police officer who's long harbored a crush for her, tries to warn Moll off, but is rebuffed. More official inquiries soon follow; the lies start to pile up.

Moll, a girl who's been a victim her entire life, is resentful that everyone is pressing down on Pascal, ruining her first -- possibly only? -- chance at love. But part of her can't shake the suspicion the accusations are true.

She even starts to have daydreams about committing unspeakable acts herself. A tidbit from her own past reminds us that sudden, sharp violence is not unknown to her. Moll occasionally plucks random long hairs she discovers growing from her body.

Is Pascal the beast, or she? Or maybe they both are, and he just wears his malevolence more outwardly?

Writer/director Michael Pearce, making his feature film debut, gives us an astonishingly evocative film in which the spoken words carry the least of the information to the audience. Much of the movie is spent just looking at Moll, seeing how awkward and timid she is, then watching her grow -- not always in a positive way -- in the warmth of Pascal's seething glow.

Buckley has an amazingly frank, raw, almost feral beauty. With her one-sided smile and tangle of crimson curls, we know in our hearts Moll was always the bullied girl at school, the one they called ugly who never had a boyfriend. She's internalized that abuse to such an extent it's become an intrinsic part of her shriveled personality.

She is the unwanted, the woman everyone takes for granted. Now someone finally wants her for her, and she throws herself into that desire with frightening abandon.

There's one brief, wonderful scene where Moll has come home after a night out with Pascal. Her hands are filthy, and she sits on the couch, grinding her crusted fingernails into the pristine cushions, leaving tracks of filth. Her face beams with dark satisfaction in this act, the good little girl finally finding the fierce woman inside.

"Beast" is a gorgeous, sensuous, forbidding work of cinema. It's like a warm embrace, and then it starts to squeeze with a killer's strength.