Colette (2018) Review

Colette is a brilliantly acted engaging film about the  French novelist, actress, and journalist Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984.

As with most biographical films about interesting people large amounts of their lives had to be left out due to time constraints. The years are shown on-screen to show how much time has passed between events, but the film’s biggest weakness is in a few cases the viewer has to fill in what must of happened between the gaps in order for the characters and story to make sense.

The acting and chemistry between the actors is excellent and the backbone of the story. The film is largely about Colette’s relationships and how they impacted her writing. This isn’t necessarily a bad choice, but some viewers may have wished to see more of the Colette beyond her relationships.  Luckily we see more of Colette as an individual as the film progresses.

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Thanks for the tag! I know a little about the real/biographical Colette, but haven’t been able to see the film yet (it seems to have been ‘coming soon’ for so long…), so will save this to read later…

It's good. I liked it...

‘Maurice is a revelation … a candid, lucid, passionate film.’

Very nice indeed to see a great  5-star review for Maurice from Peter Bradshaw, following his rather mysterious dismissal of it in his 5-star review of Call Me By Your Name last year. :)

PSA about the women of Maurice: Anne isn’t ‘Maurice’s sister’! And it’s a shame Bradshaw doesn’t namecheck the great Billie Whitelaw, Kitty Aldridge and Helena Michell (as Maurice’s actual mother and sisters) along with Judy Parfitt and Helena BC..

@a-different-equation​ This may be a moment for ‘The Dean of Sass’, © the much-missed @mathemata​ ;D

More seriously, I’m genuinely happy that Bradshaw has had second thoughts and given Maurice a 5* review.

@fermencja​ I think what’s good in his review is that he gestures towards Forster’s broader, scathing social critique: ‘a certain kind of unformulated English discontent’, and the conformist dullness of the future which England-with-a-capital-E has lined up for its Cambridge-educated ‘finest’, until Maurice rebels and demands something else.

This aspect of Bradshaw’s review could be better developed (it’s no match for Claire Tomalin’s timelessly insightful 1987 piece which I shared yesterday) – but he is pointing towards something important of continuing relevance for brutal 2018 neoliberal/Brexit/austerity Britain. But, beyond that, you’re so right about the factual errors (obviously it’s Featherstonhaugh who ‘construes Plato’)! And (yet again!) we get this curious reframing of Maurice as the ‘story of two young men forced to deny their love’ who BOTH ‘retreat further into lonely respectability’ – when Forster’s (and Ivory’s) whole bloody point is that Maurice and Clive take different paths.

How do critics manage to react like this, as if Maurice/Alec’s physically fulfilled love, and their optimistic, egalitarian ending, were of no consequence? It beats me. Unless, perhaps, classist, radically unequal 2018 Britain is giving us classist film criticism – even, in this case, in an ostensibly left-wing newspaper.

Having said all that, this review is still an infinitely better-thing that some of the Guardian’s past treatment of Maurice and Merchant Ivory.

‘Maurice is a revelation … a candid, lucid, passionate film.’

Very nice indeed to see a great  5-star review for Maurice from Peter Bradshaw, following his rather mysterious dismissal of it in his 5-star review of Call Me By Your Name last year. :)

PSA about the women of Maurice: Anne isn’t ‘Maurice’s sister’! And it’s a shame Bradshaw doesn’t namecheck the great Billie Whitelaw, Kitty Aldridge and Helena Michell (as Maurice’s actual mother and sisters) along with Judy Parfitt and Helena BC..

‘Guess who’s coming to DNA’

;D Sight & Sound’s punning captions are unbeatable. Their (Mar 2018 issue) review of Native is rather good, too. ;)

Now with added full review. :)