Colette: Polished biopic of French legend

This polished biopic of a woman well before her times features some great performances from Keira Knightley and Dominic West.

She was a naïve ingénue from the country, all braided pigtails and long cotton dresses, and he was a big-noting writer from the city, with the ego to match his top hat.

The story of French literary legend Colette (Keira Knightley) and her first husband, Henry “Willy” Gautheir-Villars is long overdue for the big-screen treatment and there’s no better time than now.

While she may have lived in the early 1900s in France, she feels like a thoroughly modern woman, a pioneer of women’s rights, literature and pushing past conventions.

This biopic of the Nobel Literature Prize nominee, directed by Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice), is a pleasant and enjoyable movie, with good performances from Knightley and West.

Colette meets Willy while barely out of school, a young girl from Burgundian village who’s whisked off to Paris, to the fashionable and bohemian salons where writers, artists and intellectuals mingle and mock.

Willy is a fairly well-regarded writer and critic, though he’s more of an “ideas man”, preferring to hire others to ghostwrite and do the actual work. He’s a consummate marketer, an unscrupulous, bombasty combo of P.T. Barnum and Steve Jobs, going on about “brand”.

Desperate for a new hit, with a publisher’s deadline looming and his book advance running out, Willy recruits Colette to pen a story, a thinly veiled, slightly erotic tale of her school years growing up in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye.

The book, Claudine at School, is a sensation and Willy is the toast of Paris, credited with creating a fresh character at the cusp of womanhood, exploring that first flush of sexuality.

That’s a very top tophat

Colette doesn’t baulk at the fact that a man has claimed credit for his wife’s work — it’s too despairingly familiar. Colette actually serves as an interesting companion piece to this year’s The Wife and Glenn Close’s quiet but effective performance in that film.

Colette portrays its protagonist’s journey to self-empowerment, finding her identity and embarking on a relationship with the Marquise de Belbeuf, Mathilde de Morny, against all social expectations, even in Paris during Belle Epoque.

Colette hints at the complexity of Colette and Willy’s marriage — his impetuousness, her initial jealousy, their affairs — but it doesn’t delve deeply enough.

Keira Knightley’s Colette is an empowering figure

There’s something a little too polished and slick about it all, perhaps to simplify some of that real-life stickiness for a movie that’s supposed to resonate in the #metoo era with a story of a woman finding her voice.

Later in life, the historical Colette went on to write Gigi, a novella that was turned into a musical and film, about a young girl being groomed to be a courtesan who eventually marries a much older man — not the kind of story that plays well today.

Having said all that, Colette features some wonderful performances, especially from Knightley, who deftly, convincingly charts Colette’s journey from “innocent” to authentic bohemian.

Rating: ★★★½

Colette is in cinemas from today.

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