Colette 2018

    Gabrielle Collette is very happy that she has married Parisian writer Henry Gauthier-Villars, known by his friends as Willy.  He is fourteen years older than his new wife.  She moves away from her childhood home in rural France to Paris.  This is a bit of a shock to her and she misses the countryside.  She’s also angry with Willy for some of his behavior.  Willy has writer’s block and he convinces Collette to ghostwrite for him.  She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about country girl Claudine.  The novel becomes a bestseller and a cultural sensation with every young woman wanting to be Claudine.  The adventures in Paris of Willy and Collette inspire more novels about Claudine.  Collette begins to feel constrained by Willy and she would like France to know that she has written the Claudine novels

     Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born 28 January 1873 and she died 3 August 1954.  She was a French author and woman of letters nominated for the Noble Prize in Literature in 1948.  Willy was born in 1859 and he died in 1931.  Collette’s first four novels, the four Claudine stories, Claudine a l’ecole (school) 1900, Claudine a Paris 1901, Claudine en ménage (married) 1902 and Claudine es’enva (and Annie) appeared under Willy’s name.  They are about Claudine from the age of 15 in a Burgundina village to a doyenne (most respected or prominent person in a particular field) of the literary salons of turn-of-the-century Paris.  Willy and Colette separated in 1906 and their divorce was final in 1910.  Collette did not receive the sizeable earnings of the Claudine books since the copyright belonged to Willy.  Collette married Henry de Jouvenel, the editor of Le Matin.  She had a daughter Colette de Jouvenel in 1913.  During WWI Colette devoted herself to journalism.  I thought this film was very good.  4 ½* (I really liked this movie)         

111 min, Bio directed by Wash Westmoreland with Keira Knightley, Fiona Shaw, Dominic West, Robert Pugh, Sloan Thompson, Arabella Weir, Mate Haumann, Ray Panthaki, Al, Weaver, Virag Barany, Dickie Beau, Kylie Watt, Janine Harouni, Jake Graf, Joe Geary.

Note:  Imdb 6.8 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 87% critic 70% audience, Roger Ebert 3*, The Guardian 4* out of 5* Mark Kermode, EmpireOnline 4* out of 5* Helen O’hara, RollingStone 4* out of 5* Peter Travers,  Metacritic 74 out of 100 with 40 critics 7 out of 10 with 50 user scores, The Telegraph 4* out of 5* Tim Robey.

Special Note:  Filmed in Budapest and Kecskemet, Hungary; Cogges Manor Farm, Witney, Oxfordshire, England, UK.  There were times at the Budapest location shoot that Dominic West wore a water vest inside his heavy costume.  It was like a car radiator and circulated cool water around his upper body.  John C. Reilly used this vest while acting as Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie 2018.  It was illegal for women to wear men’s clothing in France during this time period.  There was a scandal over Collette’s choice to wear pants.  Colette wrote the novella Gigi published in 1944 and it was the basis for the stage production 1973 and 1958 film of the same title.  Some shooting was done in Budapest because of the cost to shoot in Paris.  The French countryside was reconstructed in the regions of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.