Roxane and Her Man

Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Cyrano de Bergerac, opening nationwide this month, is that rarest breed of film: a stampede of dust and motion spurred by a war of words. Anthony Burgess translates Edmond Rostand's couplets, with all their garrulous showmanship (and not-so-veiled barbs at Moliere), and Gerard Depardieu gives a loping performance as the poet-swordsman—dolloping out swirls of ferocious gentility and heaving his considerable frame like a parachute alighting. On Cyrano's French debut, Depardieu, who won the best-actor award at Cannes for his performance, noted, "Cyrano is a tornado—he expends his energy and feelings without a second thought and without worrying about getting hurt. I'm quite like him. During rehearsals, I never would have imagined I could take violence so far. Cyrano is the film of my forties."

As Roxane, Anne Brochet skirts Depardieu's performance like a coquette in virgin's petticoats—all coy and cunning. Brochet, twenty-four, was unveiled in Claude Chabrol's 1987 Masques, a psychological thriller in which she played the ingenue ward of Philippe Noiret's malevolent TV host, but she has found the spotlight with Cyrano. "I think people recognize me now a bit on the street," she recently said. "I don't go looking for it, but the whispers give me. . .pleasure."

M.P.