Keira Knightley’s best role since The Duchess
Colette 1h 51min) Biography, Drama, History
KEIRA Knightley delivers a playfully sly, subtly nuanced performance in director and co-writer Wash Westmoreland’s biographical drama about the titular French writer and performer. Focusing on Colette’s early power struggles with her egotistical husband (Dominic West) and her challenging of traditional gender boundaries, it’s an empowering and entertaining tale of a woman finding her own voice in a society in flux. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, with production designs inspired by the French films of German director Max Ophüls, Colette convincingly conjures a late19th/early-20th century milieu, to which it adds a thoroughly modern sensibility.
In late-1880s rural Burgundy, vagabond spirit and self-proclaimed “country girl” Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is courted by literary entrepreneur Henri Gauthier-Villars, marriage to whom opens the door to an exciting new world in Paris. Initially dazzled by his cosmopolitan lifestyle, our heroine soon becomes aware that her husband’s expenditure exceeds both his talent and his fidelity. Fortunes change, however, when her semi-autobiographical tales of a young girl’s journey to maturity (penned at her husband’s instruction, sometimes under lock and key) become a popular sensation.
Published under Gauthier-Villars’ popular nom-de-plume “Willy” (he calls it “a brand”), the ghost-written Claudine à l’École strikes a chord, particularly with young female readers. A series of novels, stage productions, and trend-setting “Claudine” haircuts and accoutrements follow, making Willy and Colette (as she is now known) the toast of the town, while still maintaining the pretence of his authorship. But Colette’s burgeoning relationships with socialite belle Georgie (a theatrically accented Eleanor Tomlinson) and later with the stereotype-defying Missy (Denise Gough, owning the role) encourage her to redefine herself, taking back control of — and credit for — her life and work.
The screenplay gives each key character a distinctive register; from the hilariously pompous witticisms of Willy, a role West attacks with tangible relish, to the proud impertinence of Missy, a trailblazer who
proves that women can wear the trousers, even when the law says otherwise.
At the centre of it all is Colette, whose charismatic personality we watch grow from wide-eyed wonder to defiant selfdetermination. Knightley’s writer tries to find her place in a world in which her own identity has been effectively stolen from her. “No-one can take away who you are,” Colette’s mother (Fiona Shaw) reassures her distraught daughter, but Willy seems to be intent upon doing just that — subsuming her identity under his own overpowering ego.
In her best role since Saul Dibb’s 2008 period drama The Duchess, Knightley brings Colette to life with a performance that blends grit with glamour in seemingly effortless fashion.