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shewhomustI wonder how much of the story the audience of Wash Westmoreland's film Colette is supposed to know before seeing the film? Here's my local cinema's summary:
Which takes you a fair way through the narrative of the film. Yes, young Gabrielle will marry Willy, yes, she will join his stable of ghost writers, yes, her book will be published and will be successful (in the interests of full disclosure, I admit I hadn't realised that Claudine's success was quite such a phenomenon). Considering the television version of the Jeremy Thorpe story, I said it provided an interesting case study in considering whether spoilers matter: the same is true of Colette. Will our heroine manage to claim the literary glory usurped by her husband? (Clue: would this film have been made if she hadn't?)
Is it, in this context, significant that it's a British film, not a French one? I kept being disconcerted by this. When Colette is shown writing, what she writes is in French, while she speaks the words, in voice over, in English: this detail feels significant to me, though I can't say what it signifies. You could, in any case, know that Colette was a major literary figure without knowing how or whether she and Willy resolved their personal lives. In which case you could watch the film as a romance: will Colette find happiness in her marriage or elsewhere? And in these terms, the film offers a happy ending, by making Missy the romantic hero. Which works, so long as you stop before the love affair does. It makes Missy a very attractive character, as much transgendered as gay (I have no idea what, if anything, this distinction might mean to people of this time). The film left me wanting to read more Colette, but to know more about Missy.
For the rest, it was a pleasure just to look at the pretty pictures: this is the belle époque at its most beautiful, from Sido's garden in Burgundy to the glittering salons of Paris. Keira Knightley is beautiful as Colette (more beautiful, I suspect, than Colette herself, and less feline) and wears a succession of costumes which have already been examined by the fashion pages of the Guardian. Paris is ravishing (and mostly in Budapest, although Burgundy, apparently, is in Oxfordshire) and spotless: this is a world in which poverty id having the bailiffs arrive to remove some antique furniture before you go out to dinner. There's even a sprinkling of steam trains.
After Sidonie-Gabrielle 'Colette' marries a successful man of letters known simply as "Willy", she moves to Paris and writes a semi-autobiographical novel about a country girl named Claudine.
Unfortunately, because Willy convinced her to ghostwrite for him, she doesn't get any of the credit for the phenomenon that her novel becomes. And in the years to come, while her and Willy's adventures become the talk of Paris, she defies everyone to get her name on the books she writes.
Which takes you a fair way through the narrative of the film. Yes, young Gabrielle will marry Willy, yes, she will join his stable of ghost writers, yes, her book will be published and will be successful (in the interests of full disclosure, I admit I hadn't realised that Claudine's success was quite such a phenomenon). Considering the television version of the Jeremy Thorpe story, I said it provided an interesting case study in considering whether spoilers matter: the same is true of Colette. Will our heroine manage to claim the literary glory usurped by her husband? (Clue: would this film have been made if she hadn't?)
Is it, in this context, significant that it's a British film, not a French one? I kept being disconcerted by this. When Colette is shown writing, what she writes is in French, while she speaks the words, in voice over, in English: this detail feels significant to me, though I can't say what it signifies. You could, in any case, know that Colette was a major literary figure without knowing how or whether she and Willy resolved their personal lives. In which case you could watch the film as a romance: will Colette find happiness in her marriage or elsewhere? And in these terms, the film offers a happy ending, by making Missy the romantic hero. Which works, so long as you stop before the love affair does. It makes Missy a very attractive character, as much transgendered as gay (I have no idea what, if anything, this distinction might mean to people of this time). The film left me wanting to read more Colette, but to know more about Missy.
For the rest, it was a pleasure just to look at the pretty pictures: this is the belle époque at its most beautiful, from Sido's garden in Burgundy to the glittering salons of Paris. Keira Knightley is beautiful as Colette (more beautiful, I suspect, than Colette herself, and less feline) and wears a succession of costumes which have already been examined by the fashion pages of the Guardian. Paris is ravishing (and mostly in Budapest, although Burgundy, apparently, is in Oxfordshire) and spotless: this is a world in which poverty id having the bailiffs arrive to remove some antique furniture before you go out to dinner. There's even a sprinkling of steam trains.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 01:37 am (UTC)The distinction did exist, but recovering it from the historical record can be tricky, since people did not always (as they do not always now) talk about the nuances of how their particular presentation should be read.
The film left me wanting to read more Colette, but to know more about Missy.
Historically they had a great face!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 11:02 am (UTC)That's rather what I suspected - thanks!
Historically they had a great face!
Also in the film, as played by Denise Gough.