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As someone who has never been especially fond of classical music or French literature (bite me, Proust), I wasn't exactly drooling when my roommate cajoled me into watching an art film about the romance between Frederic Chopin and George Sand. I wound up laughing my derriere off. First off, ignore the Parisian drag, this is a British sex farce -- witness the cast (Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Judy Davis) and the screwball plot (an aggressive woman who enjoys wearing men's clothes tries to win the heart of a shy, mild-mannered man). Big kudos to director Lapine and screenwriter Sarah Kernochen for treating the famous figures they depict as flesh-and-blood characters, not icons to be revered or reviled. And special reverence must be accorded an absolutely outstanding cast -- Judy Davis is usually pretty damn brilliant, and she does it again here as George Sand. One forgets that Hugh Grant was actually a good actor before he started playing Hugh Grant in all his movies, and he makes Chopin an utterly charming wimp. But this is the movie that made me love Emma Thompson. Hers is a relatively minor role, as a flighty French noblewoman ("stupid, stupid rain!" she curses foolishly at the weather) whom the other characters alternately mock and seduce. But Thompson has the talent to make the Duchess D'Antan both hysterically clueless and touchingly vulnerable -- if your eyes remain dry as you watch the Duchess hang her head after viewing the play Sand writes specifically to insult her, your heart is made of stone. Even the normally annoying Bernadette Peters is pretty decent here. Watch it now.
score 10/10
Putzberger 21 June 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1399099/ |
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1-3-2021 00:06:17