Movie review: In 'Cheri,' growing old never looked more elegant

"Chéri" is a sad, intelligent film about coming of age late in life, looking in the mirror and wondering, "What happened?"

Set in a gorgeous re-creation of pre-World War I France, it concerns a beautiful young man who refuses to grow up and his much older lover, who knows she is past her prime. Chéri, whose given name is Fred, is a spoiled dandy, pampered and neglected by his mother, Charlotte, a well-to-do ex-courtesan. For six years -- at Charlotte's request -- her former competitor, Lea, has instructed Chéri in the pleasures of the flesh, preparing him for his eventual arranged marriage.

The pair have been careful to keep their feelings in check, in view of their inevitable separation. It's not until Chéri marries a lovely 18-year-old that they realize they are incapable of happiness apart. She leaves town and takes a new young lover who is handsome but gauche. He finds his new bride unsatisfactory. Lea and Chéri dance a waltz of reconciliation, but their time is running out.

Director Stephen Frears ("The Queen") has adapted his film from two novels by the celebrated French writer Colette, who observed her characters' emotions with microscopic vividness, and he does her full justice. The look is elegant, the script urbane, the grasp of a rigid social milieu assured. He has cast the film with a sharpshooter's eye. Michelle Pfeiffer's Lea remains beautiful, certainly, but she is a fabulous bouquet that is just off its bloom. She brings a great dignity and delicacy to the role, allowing us to intuit Lea's emotions from the angle of a glance, the subtle, insinuating inflection of a word or phrase.

Rupert Friend as Chéri perfectly fits Colette's description: "not strictly feminine but a trifle prettier than one could have wished." He is as spoiled as a cat in his early scenes, and when he understands too late what he has lost, his pain is nicely underplayed. Kathy Bates is sly and underhanded as Charlotte, ever on the alert to other women's aging as she holds court among her old rivals. Isn't it lovely, she pointedly asks Lea, how one's neck holds perfume when the skin goes slack?

As the characters age, the social and political conditions change, and the players do their best to adapt. Chéri, a beautiful ornament without substance, faces the hardest challenge in finding his way through a new world that values actions above feelings, entrepreneurial accomplishments over dilettante refinement.

The characters inhabit a world of grand hotels, opium dens, top hats and ebony carriages, but when the film is done we understand that they are no different from us. Insecurity, heartbreak and regret are timeless, and "Chéri" evokes them gorgeously.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186