Chéri

I liked the look of the pedigree of Chéri because the film was from director Steven Frears and writer Christopher Hampton both of who worked on ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ twenty plus years ago. That film featured Michelle Pfeiffer and she stars again here. There are other similarities between the two films, both being French period pieces and both involving libertine-esk behaviour or so I thought.

The synopsis for Chéri looked good. It promised the son of a courtesan being initiated in the ways of love by an older woman. Ah, a young boys dream.

The film opened with an annoying voiceover which explained about the ‘Belle Époque’ and what a ‘courtesan’ was, but thankfully the voiceover didn’t last long. A courtesan is, in this case, a woman who offers her charms to clients, usually rich folk in return for some of their money. These tend to be long-term arrangements, not brief encounters.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays one such upmarket prostitute, Léa de Lonval, who’s feeling that perhaps she’s getting too old for all this and she’s considering retirement. However she is persuaded to embark on one last assignment by a former colleague and ex-courtesan, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). Bates, incidentally, is as good as ever, not that I can really picture her younger self as an appealing courtesan doing the deed.



Léa agrees to spend a few weeks ‘educating’ Peloux’s 19-year-old son Fred (Rupert Friend). He has known her all her life as an auntie and when he was young she christened him Chéri, while he knows her affectionately as ‘Noo Noo’ or perhaps ‘Nu Nu’.

What they haven’t done before though, is get off with each other, obviously, and it somewhat spoils the film that this happens within seconds of Peloux giving them the green light. There’s no chase. Pfeiffer doesn’t have to be talked into her task and Chéri certainly doesn’t need asking twice. Our Fred, you see, is no shrinking violet. In fact he’s been a bit of a playboy and has been quite adept at putting it about, which is why his mother wants him with Léa and away from praying on other more impressionable young girls. Which is a shame, because had Chéri been more innocent then Rupert Friend would have been perfect as a blank canvas for Pfeiffer to work on but he’s not really believable as an object of lust for her. Surely an experienced woman such as Léa would have eaten him for breakfast and been bored to tears by lunch.

Apparently not, their few weeks’ turns into six years of living in sin, as their not terribly dangerous liaison blossoms into a full-blown romance. Quite what she saw in him I have no idea.



I’m also not sure what she educated him in. She certainly didn’t make him any more of a gentleman. He comes with very few redeeming features and he doesn’t seem to develop any under her tutorship. She even ends up paying for him rather than making money out of him.

The romance comes to an end when the Machiavellian Peloux corrals Chéri into an arranged marriage with some young crumpet that she’s found for him, the daughter of another courtesan.

Married life, unsurprisingly, doesn’t suit him and he soon comes running back to Léa’s boudoir offering her a second bite at the Chéri. Sorry couldn’t resist that.

Naturally she takes him back just long enough to ruffle her chiffon before she packs him back off to his wife.



Michelle Pfeiffer is as good as ever and looked the part, Rupert Friend does ok too but it’s a pretty uninvolving film, you just don’t feel much attachment to the characters. At the end, we are told that Chéri is tortured by his love for what he can’t have, a woman who is too old for him. Unfortunately this is the first time we get any inkling of this, at least from such a dramatic angle. The story of an ultimately doomed affair between an older woman and her toy boy could have been dramatic all the way through. It’s not particularly steamy either, despite all; the ‘educating’ going on. Dangerous Liaisons it certainly wasn’t.