Molière

While New York Times film critic A.O. Scott may rail at the "fundamentally bogus and anti-literary idea that the great writers of the past wrote what they knew", there is still a pervasive longing out there to discover the connection between an author's life and his work. The audacious premise that great art reflects an author's life experience is promoted in films such as John Madden's Shakespeare in Love and now in Moliére, Laurent Tirard's speculative costume drama of the great French playwright. While the suggestion that the mystery of genius lies in a secret love affair borders on the banal, these films attempt to give us a sense of who these great artists were as people and what may have been at least one source of their inspiration.

Like Shakespeare in Love, Moliére uses guesswork, imagination, and creativity to fill in the blanks when the facts are not readily available. What we do know about the life of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin known to the world as Moliére is scanty. In 1644 he was a 22-year old actor who spent some time in debtor's prison after his touring company went bankrupt. After that the young actor and aspiring playwright disappeared for several months before he surfaced in the provinces. It was there that he toured with his Illustre Theatre for 13 years before arriving in Paris convinced that tragedy was the only true theater.

Of course, what is not known is what inspired him to take a comic turn, but Tirard allows us to imagine characters and situations that might have led to such great works as "Tartuffe" and "Le Bourgeois Gentlhomme" and 28 other plays which roast the upper classes as affected hypocrites and worse. Soulfully and convincingly performed by Romain Duris, who has been known for dramatic roles such as the pianist in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Moliére is rescued from prison by a bumbling aristocrat named Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini). Jourdain has written a one-act play that he wants to perform at the salon of the haughty widow, marquise Celimene (Ludivine Sagnier) with whom he is smitten.

Paying Moliére's debts, he hires him to teach him the skills of an actor while tricking his graceful wife Elmire (Laura Morante) into believing that he is a priest named Mr. Tartuffe who has come only to counsel his daughter in matters of religion. This ruse runs into problems when Tartuffe/Moliére's falls in love with Madame Jourdain; however their relationship becomes a transforming experience for the actor/playwright when she suggests that he concentrate on writing a different kind of comedy, one that probes the emotions of a drama.

Complications are plentiful as the story moves from comedy to farce, to tragedy and back again with the assistance of a scheming count named Dorante (Edouard Baer) whose goal is to marry his son Thomas (Gillian Petrovsky) to Jourdain's daughter Henriette (Fanny Valette) regardless of the fact that Henriette is in love with her music teacher Valere (Gonzague Requillart). Moliére may not fully capture the true essence of the French author but the fact that it does suggest a writer of depth, wit, and inspiration may entice the viewer to seek out the source material first hand. Granted that the film is speculation, not biography, but it is art and the payoff is a romantic and richly entertaining tribute to one of the greatest playwrights in history.

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.

Laurent Tirard's costume comedy "Molière" finds comparison with "Shakespeare in Love" rather easily, and perhaps most dauntingly, to its legendary subject's own durable narratives. But while there's not as much details missing from the 17th-century French playwright Moliere's (Romain Duris) life as there was in Shakespeare's, there's still ample room for a fanciful imagination and conjecture.

The window is small, for Tirard and co-writer Grégoire Vigneron to present the missing weeks of Molière's life after his brief imprisonment for not paying his debts, just before he embarked with his troupe on a 13-year tour of the French provinces before his triumphant return to the theatre scene in Paris. The driving point in this film, as it was in "Shakespeare in Love", is how great art tends to imitate life and how muses tend to stem from elaborate romances, which in this case is Molière's torrid affair with the wealthy Monsieur Jourdain's (Fabrice Luchini) wife Elmire (an enthralling Laura Morante).

Tirard's first salvo and indeed the one that sustains its premise throughout the end, is his understanding that a film about Molière has to be a farce, an important element that shapes his later and most important works when romance, gender politics and the moral bankruptcy of the French aristocracy become his staples. As a staunch tragedian, he gets an early education in the deviancy of the social class from the misguidedly smitten Jourdain who picks him out from his cell to help him perfect his self-written play to impress the blueblood snob, Célimene (Ludivine Sagnier). But "Molière", for all its charm and spirited performances does play rather loose in its opening hour, setting up the strands to be tangled in its second half. The modern transposition of the ringing hypocrisy of the rapacious upper class and eager capitalists ingratiating themselves into a privileged circle offers up its most scintillating prospects.

Nonetheless, flawed in his initial insistence of tragedy as the spirit of true art, it would seem that while Molière's life is a stage, he's not yet in on the act. Duris plays his character with an insinuating intelligence, cynically wearing a scowl on his face but a twinkle of hope in his eyes, all with a precise intensity that threatens to spill over. A hard sell for a light comedy bordering on fluff, but Molière plays the crucial role of the straight man in his own farce. There's no sombre reverence to Molière and his work, though the film hints at the genesis of his later plays through overtly familiar circumstances, making it a more fruitful experience for those intimate with his works.

'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

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