Every now and then, a movie comes along that shows you how to do it right. Colette is, quite simply, a masterpiece. Director Wash Westmoreland delivers scene after scene of cinematic empathy in which we see the evolution of French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, played brilliantly by Keira Knightley, from innocent child to affected woman. The best thing about the film, however, is how it fails to treat any of its characters as exceptions: these are not special people, these are not people who changed the world; rather, every character, from Dominic West’s pitiful Henry Gauthier-Villars to Denise Gough’s tender Mathilde de Morny, is utterly normal.
Colette has the distinction of setting up its characters so well, that within a mere ten minutes of the film playing, I knew Knightley’s Colette and West’s “Willy” like the back of my hand. I knew these people and what they wanted; what they aspired to be, and, ultimately, what road their fates would take. But these rhythms are not, as is the case in another Knightley vehicle The Aftermath (Kent, 2019), rammed down one’s throat, that is, they never tire out the film’s narrative before it’s even had time to find its feet. What we have instead in Colette are premonitions of momentary episodes, the order of which is entirely up for speculation as we view it. I think it is here, in the subtly kaleidoscopic structure of the movie that Lucia Zucchetti’s editing takes centre stage. It is a damn well edited film, and I salute her for the pristine job she did, which, had someone like Fred Raskin been doing it, would have buggered the whole thing up.
We have a slew of terrific performances: Knightley and West’s odd couple illustrates the most fascinating dynamic I’ve seen in the cinema in a long time. I wanted Colette and Willy to scheme, and argue, and fall out, and reunite, and scheme again for hours and hours. But because Zucchetti and Westmoreland are not fools, we get, miraculously, a film that begins exactly where it should, and ends exactly where it must. I wouldn’t take a frame out of Colette; nor would I put anything in. As an audience, we spend the perfect amount of time with each character. In particular, Fiona Shaw as Colette’s mother Sido, is pitch-perfect; her role is one standout performance among many.
How reassuring it is to have a film in which a kinky world is not exposed, but explained. There are love scenes in Colette; there are louche depictions of role-play, strange sexual theatrics—But all of these, for better or for worse, are represented as the results of bad life choices, and good life choices, if one may even make that distinction. It is one of the best films about coping with things that I have ever seen.
There is much love in Colette, but it always takes the more important form, or explains how the strongest loves are built, ultimately, upon friendship(s).
There is much illustration of agape and eros in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). But that is a film about explicit love, not friendship, and why it deflates in comparison to Colette—I have often thought, had Fonny’s sexuality been more explicitly bi- or even pansexual (referring here to James Baldwin’s belief that real love transcends, or is unconcerned with gender), the film would not have been as hopeless as it is, or as I found it to be.
There is, on the contrary, much hope in Colette, and this springs from screenwriters Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Westmoreland’s complete empathy with the very normal situations their characters are thrown into.
There is a sense, in the film’s 1 hour and 52 minutes, that love is such an unimportant word; it is a word—And the one thing that transcends our paltry expressions, the words, is that thing that cannot be named. It is not good enough to call it, ‘friendship’; it is the force that binds communities of people, and Colette offers a fascinating community for the right amount of time.
With all this in mind, I cannot fathom why the 2019 Bermuda International Film Festival failed to include Colette in its selection of features. This was a film that Bermuda needed to see, and feel.
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