The movies I’ve seen most recently are both French biopics: Molière and La Môme. I was mostly able to follow along, although some of the argot in La Môme eluded me. I miss subtitles, though: it’s a pity movies aren’t captioned for the hearing impaired in the theaters.
This is more Molière‘s (early) life as if it had been a Molière play than biopic. Think “French remake of Shakespeare in Love” and you’ll be on the right track. The premise is that 22 year old Molière is rescued from debtor’s prison by a man with more money than sense who wants Molière’s help in attracting the attention of a woman with whom he’s enamored. Along the way, Molière encounters the characters and situations that would later figure in his plays.
It’s an entertaining romp, although there’s something of a disconnect between the script and most of the cast, who seem to be under the impression that this is a farce, and Romain Duris as Molière himself, who, though excellent, is far too intense and even tortured for the tone of the movie.
I suspect I’d have enjoyed this still more if I were more familiar with Molière’s work. While I recognized some of the characters and situations vaguely, I’m sure that I missed even more than I caught.
It’s slated for a (limited) US release later this summer, and it’s worth checking out, especially for the French theater buff.
La Môme is about Edith Piaf, who was known early in her career as La Môme Piaf (the Kid Sparrow). It’s also due for a US release this summer, as La Vie en Rose. I can see why they didn’t keep it as La Môme (in French), since that would be a little too obscure for Anglophones, and translating the title to The Kid might just get people all confused with the Chaplin (1921) or Willis (1990) movies. But, not that anyone asked me, if they had to go with the name of one of her songs, why in mercy’s name didn’t they choose “Je ne regrette rien“? That would have made ever so much more sense.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-IH4lCqDqk]
At any rate, Marion Cotillard is superb as Piaf. The movie itself is very episodic and jumps around in a seriously distracting fashion. Her daughter, who died in childhood, appears only briefly in flashback towards the end in a scene that you would miss if you blinked, and the Second World War apparently never occurred. The only way I could keep track of the “when” of the movie was by assessing how ravaged Cotillard looked in any given scene. I’m not sure what the director was thinking: a more straight-forward approach would surely have served his purposes as well.