Molière

Molière (2007), co-written and directed by Laurent Tirard, creatively fills a historical gap that exists in the biography of the playwright/actor Molière. Apparently, Molière was released from debtors prison, and did not rejoin his acting company for several months. The movie provides us with a fictional reconstruction of what went on during that time span.

Like many period films, this movie has high production values. The sets and costumes are glorious, and we are spared the usual obligatory images of filth and squalor. Instead, most of the film takes place in the château of the very wealthy M. Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), and his dutiful--if somewhat bored--wife (Laura Morante). Ludivine Sagnier plays a wealthy young widow, the Marquise Célimène.

The plot revolves around M. Jourdain's worshipful love for the Marquise. The Marquise barely knows he exists and so M. Jourdain proposes to hire Molière to teach him how to make a good impression on the object of his desires. The Marquise is self-centered, vain, and proud, and M. Jourdain is a fool. However, he is a rich fool, and can afford to go where his whims take him. Molière accepts the job, and the film moves forward from there.

Romain Duris is very good as Molière. He reminds me of Johnny Depp, and, like Depp, he overplays his role in a humorous and enjoyable way . Fabrice Luchini is excellent as M. Jourdain--a man who has a wonderful wife but lusts after an unattainable and unlikeable woman. Laura Morante is outstanding as the wife, who lives with luxury but not with love. Ms. Morante is Italian, so it's not clear to me whether her voice was dubbed. In any case, she plays her role with skill and subtlety, and she has a presence that lights up the screen.

This film will remind you of "Shakespeare in Love" and "Becoming Jane." It tries to correlate the artist's experiences--about which we can only speculate--with his or her art, about which we know a great deal. It is obviously unlikely that we will ever learn what led Austen or Shakespeare or Molière to write their masterpieces. Because this vacuum exists, writers and directors are free to speculate about events, and present these speculations to us in the form of movies.

I enjoyed both "Shakespeare in Love" and "Becoming Jane," and I would put "Molière" into this same category--not a great film, but a very good film, and definitely worth seeing.

If you have already seen this movie you may come to know that it was the similar story theme to 'Shakespeare in Love'. That is not what I was going to say, this movie really did some magic spell on me because absolutely loved the movie all the way from top to bottom. The settings and the costumes, wow, very impressive, looked so natural. You know, most of the commercial flick that sets in the period like this, the filmmakers use nice and clean costumes. Cinematographically that looks awesome but won't feel like that is true.

The movie filled with plenty of humorous scenes. The story sets in the mid 17th century France, where a popular countryside writer and actor, Molière, goes to Paris to conduct one of his play. There he comes across with some person he knew before, which takes us to the 13 years earlier flashback story. Then he was a young talented comedian who was looking for a first breakthrough in his career. Due to interference in royal affair he was jailed but a wealthy man named Jourdain saves him. Now he owes him so he helps untalented Jourdain to seduce a widow woman. Initially he tries to escape from there but something changes in him and give reason to stay. While seducing another woman, Jourdain brings a great mess into the family without his knowledge. As the adults how they gonna solve the problem is the movie's twist and turn.

I can say the flawless, perfect performance by Fabrice Luchini was the movie's highlight. I have seen some movies of Romain Duris, it was his one of the best performances in those I have seen. Both Fabrice Luchini and Romain Duris from the driver's seat drove the movie to the success. You will enjoy it as a fine period comedy. The first three quarters were decent fun and the last quarter of the movie is what turns into a serious and emotional side of the tale. And that is where most of the audience will fall for it.

9/10

This movie is a true delight for Moliere's fans.A good knowledge of his plays is useful but the screenplay is strong enough to grab someone who is not particularly interested in them.The story is essentially based on "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" (aka "the middle class gentleman" ) and "Tartuffe" with elements borrowed from "Le Misanthrope" ,"Les Femmes Savantes" ,"L'Avare " and "Les Fourberies De Scapin" .Now the lines are directly taken from the writer ,now they are written in his style .Each character represents two or three other characters:the wonderful Fabrice Lucchini is Monsieur Jourdain and Orgon,Romain Duris is Molière and Tartuffe ,Laura Morante is Elmire and Madame Jourdain and the excellent Edouard Baer ,Dorante ,Alceste and some kind of "Grand Turc" .

Agatha Christie disappeared when her husband left her and as nobody knew what she did in those days they made a movie about it in the late seventies ("Agatha" ,Michael Apted).So why not Molière?In France ,some critics such as the reliable Claude Bouliq Mercier slagged off Tirard's movie ,proving that they can be prodigious snobs themselves sometimes;of course they spoke in the name of culture,of art ,of Molière -who -was one-more-time-betrayed ,they do not have any sense of humor.

Molière meeting his famous characters before writing his plays (after all they were inspired by the society he lived in) is pure fiction,and should not be taken too seriously:hence the failure with the French intellectual audience who praises to the skies any sequence of Woody Allen's films .I remember a teacher who could captivate his class with "Le Misanthrope" .He often made us laugh .I remembered him when I was watching"Molière" ,particularly the so-called "scene des Petits Marquis " updated by Celimène/Dorimène .Thank you,Mr Tirard.

NB :should not be mistaken for Ariane Mnouchkine's eponymous work (1978)

The original idea of the movie is quite seducing : it tells us a fragment of Molière's life as if he were in a Molière's play. This fictional and fantasist biography is a sort of "what if" Molière had meet in his youth all the characters he'll use as figures to his future plays : Jourdain, Elmire, Doriante, and had also experience the comical situations he'll re-transcript later on stage : Molière pretends to be Tartufe in order to learn to act to M. Jourdain. But no mistakes here, "Molière", if you put aside the painful introduction and the final scene of the movie, isn't a reflection on art and life and their interconnection, in an "Amadeus"'s style : if it tells us Molière's life as a Molière'play, it's merely to give us a simple and shallow, but quite enjoyable comedy, far from the abyssal questions such a supposition could have arise.

There's plenty of good ideas in the movie, which underline the comical side of the original idea, but never reach its full potential. The good points are a completely fun and fantasist vision of the History, for such a concept allows a non conventional and funny vision of Molière's life. It also deals with a lot of situations and citations of Molière's plays, which are always a pleasure to hear. But the movie, even more than his lack of deep, suffers from several major defaults, that spoil a little the pleasure that the concept of the film could have offer.

The direction, for instance, is far more unoriginal and academic than the the pitch of the movie : it even sometimes looks like a movie made for TV : it's clean, but there is is no emphasis in it. The same thing goes with the script : if the idea is funny, the dialogs are sometimes a little easy and the all thing is almost always predictable : more madness could have arise from the movie. And if the actors are independently all very good, they don't really match with one another : it's like if they all were in different movies.

Romain Duris is excellent in a intense (anyway, he's always too intense) and tortured Molière, but he is hardly in a comedy : his character seems too deep in comparison to the others, for they're merely comical stereotypes from Molière's plays. Fabrice Luchini is a perfect theatrical character, taking pleasure to quote Molière's dialogs every two sentences. Laura Morante is in a quite serious marivaudage and Ludivine Sagnier and Edouard Baer are very funny, but they're in their own movie : a comical show about the XVII century. And this heterogeneity of the protagonists is really annoying in a long feature movie : you really have the impression that everyone plays his own little act, without really interfering in other's.

The movie is also a little long for what's it's worth : some scenes unnecessary last forever and some unfunny situations are longly detailed (I'm thinking about the love story of the daughter of the family : it's predictable and boring). So, at the end, all you have is a funny little french comedy, whereas it could have had the intensity and the deep of "Amadeus".

And by the way, if you like fictions based on famous writer's life, I advise you to watch "Les larmes blanches" by Grégory Rateau if you have a chance to see it. It deals with Rimbaud's youth and, in only eleven minutes, it manages to be deeper than this "Molière", and to present a much more appropriate and interesting use of famous quotations.

'Molière' is a treat for the eyes as well as a tickler for historical manipulation and in the hands of writers Laurent Tirard and Grégoire Vigneron the cinematic version of the 'lost years' of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin AKA Molière's life abounds in superb entertainment. If the story becomes a bit too convoluted at times, trying to paste together a story that parallels the French playwright's most famous plays, 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' and 'Tartuffe' as the basis for the missing portion of Molière's life, and drags on a bit too long at two hours, it is never less that gorgeous to look at and witty to hear.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin or Molière (Romain Duris) is an actor and playwright for a comedy troupe that tours the provinces of France, spending himself into debtor's prison. His mysterious disappearance from prison is the time this film uses to explain how Molière was enticed by the wealthy M. Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini) to travel to his estate for the purpose of teaching the dilettante how to write plays and to act in order to win the affection of a wealthy young Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier) while keeping his daughter and his wife Elmire (Laura Morante) at bay. There are many subplots that tend to distract but in the end the 'play' created by Molière's presence and interaction with all of the other characters provides the life lessons and food for material that leads Molière to be the greatest of French playwrights.

The cast is superb, the visual effects are opulent, the musical score is period correct, and the cinematography finds a fine balance between the lush vistas of the countryside and estates and the grimy realism of the prison and small theaters. Perhaps the story is not historically correct, but no one really knows the true events in the missing portion pf Molière's life, and this version is at least plausible and thought provoking. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp