Chéri on Top

STEPHEN FREARS'S LATEST ROMANTIC LIAISON

Whereas 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons was studded with moments of emotional violence, the exquisite new costume drama Cheri takes a more languid, less menacing approach to romantic and sexual manipulation. Why compare? Both were directed by Stephen Frears, written by Christopher Hampton, and star Michelle Pfeiffer. Their happy reunion was afforded by Hampton’s adaptation of a pair of Colette novels, in which a fading courtesan, Lea (Pfeiffer), and a pampered, preening boy-man, Cheri (Rupert Friend), run aground in the dog days of the Belle Epoque.

Hooked up by the boy’s scheming mother (Kathy Bates), Lea and Cheri live together sybaritically for six years, without acknowledging they’re in love. Their menage a trois—the third partner is pearls—is broken by malicious Maman, who finds Cheri a teen bride. Lea can only watch this charade with the rueful fatalism of a mother losing her son.

Typical of Frears’s discreet direction, Cheri shucks off its surface frivolity and Wildean wit to meditate on aging, as writ large on the faces of movie stars. Taking tea with Cheri’s mother and her friends, Lea is appalled by the grotesqueness of these fellow former courtesans. Cheri lands in an opium den whose wrinkled proprietress is played by celebrated Rolling Stones consort Anita Pallenberg. And when Lea examines her imperfections in a mirror, we can’t help but think of, say, Herb Ritts’s glowing photos of Pfeiffer for this magazine in 1989. But this is an actress who stares flintily at time: it’s a terrific performance, limited by neither narcissism nor the past.

GRAHAM FULLER