Star Scene

By Ian Gibson

Aging blond bombshell Michelle Pfeifer has a new movie in Lebanese theatres, and it’s a doozy for all the wrong reasons.

Chéri stars Pfeifer and newcomer Rupert Friend in an Parisian love affair of the early 20th century. Pfeifer plays a fabulously rich prostitute nearing retirement who takes on a young lover (Friend’s Chéri) as a sort of casual affair. Six years later, the May-September relationship is still alive and well to the surprise of both its participants, until an arranged marriage by the boy’s meddling mother turns the whole thing topsy-turvy. What follows is typical of any romance movie – the veiled betrayals, fermented emotions, and general missed connections of love.

The entire movie suffers from a terrible goofiness that is entertaining only in how laughably bad it is. Endless lines of insincere dialogue written with a false French pretentiousness are delivered with a believability more akin to a high school drama program than the silver screen. This is not the fault of the actors, however, as the blame lies solely on the elementary script and transparent film making. Members of the audience can’t help but not buy into a story that is stereotypical in one sense and highly hyperbolic in others. Each scene is all too clearly fiction, leaving an irreproachable chasm of disconnect between the viewer and subject.

Chéri attempts to present itself as a romantic tale with lessons and morals and endless babbles about the condition of the heart in want. Instead, it serves as an example of how easy it is to err whilst summing the entirety of love into a perfectly encompassing plot. Amidst the cheesy close-ups, shifty glances, and revelatory sentences is an utter lack of understanding the ever-evolving and always-illusory nature of love. Chéri is ultimately not a romantic film but rather a failed one.

Despite the glossy posters and intriguing tag-lines, beautiful scenery and talented actors, Chéri is one film that fails to be cinematic in any fashion. As the credits role and the viewer departs, they cannot help but shake their heads in discontent and disbelief at such a fantastically faulty film.

You could also find Ian wondering around movie theaters for the next big or “faulty” movies.