My offical review of the film Cheri
I am writing this review after having seen a different film, "The Young Victoria". I saw "Cheri" 2 evenings ago. Yet I find both films to be strangely similar. One story is about a courtesan - basically a high-class prostitute - and the other story is about a queen. But the stories of how they take control of their lives and how they experience the passions of love are oddly similar. Whether a prostitute or a monarch, women can take control of their circumstances in similar ways.
Cheri was written by Colette, a writer whom I find fascinating. Her own life was as dramatic as any of her stories, and she actually lived an experience similar to this story in her own life, shortly after writing it. The story is about women who utilize their powers of attraction and seduction to their own advantage, and profit financially from it, as long as they avoid that deadly danger to their craft: Love. And in this story, Love is held at a distance, but it eventually overpowers.
Love seems, at first, like such an easy topic to write about. It's just a strong attraction, right? Love of a parent, love of a partner, love between friends. What more is there to say? Everyone knows what it is. Yet it is more than mere attraction, and when it overwhelms a person it has a rationality all its own. The French writer Pascal knew this well, when he said one of my favorite sentences: "Love has reasons of which the mind knows nothing."
Michelle Pfeiffer, in this film, plays a courtesan who is nearing the end of her powers. She is middle-aged, and still attractive, but it can't last forever. She takes into her home the son of another courtesan, a man who is easily 20 years younger than her. They share a common bond and history, living in the same milieu, but she tells herself she doesn't love him. Their relationship is one-half that of mother-son and one-half that of lovers. They make love often, and they live in luxury, but they are not in love. Or so they believe. "Cheri" is the nickname she gives to the young man, and it is an expression of love, despire what she tells herself.
This easy relationship goes on for 6 years, until the young man's mother arranges a "proper" marriage for him and he suddenly disappears to marry a woman his own age. Pfeiffer tells herself that his departure means nothing, but despite her efforts to resume her life as a courtesan she finds her heart being torn open at the awareness of his absence. Despite her skill at avoiding love, she finds herself overpowered by it.
Cheri himself knows he doesn't love the young woman he has married, and Pfeiffer's character torments his thoughts day and night. He remains away from Paris for a long time, only to later return to Pfeiffer. She thinks he wants to maintain a relationship with her, but he in fact wants to live near her to test himself as a faithful husband. So she sends him away, and the film's narrator describes his eventual fate, which is a bit over-dramatic. But all romance-stories seem to have similar endings.
Love hangs like a cloud over this story, over people who have mastered the "art of love", with a lower-case letter-L, but cannot avoid eventually being swept up in the power of Love, with a capital-letter L. I found this to be almost a morality tale of the danger of pretending that Love can be hidden in a corner, but still go through the motions of love. In the end, it is like a wave that crashes on to shore, and anyone standing in its path is overcome by it.
I think many men will find this story overly-sentimental, and targetted at women who like to cry in movies. But the power of love is not limited to one gender, and to be truly "awake" both genders need to recognize it.
Since I pay close attention to the writing in any movie, I look for memorable phrases spoken by the actors. This film had one statement I liked:
"I have found that art-lovers are a more reliable source of income than art."
How true...