Twenty-one years after striking Oscar gold with Dangerous Liaisons, director Stephen Frears and actress Michelle Pfeiffer re-team with screenwriter Christopher Hampton for Chéri -- another movie about privileged, sex-obsessed French people who wear layer upon layer of fabulous clothing. Set in the waning years of the Belle Époque, the movie stars Pfeiffer as the wealthy Lea de Lonval, a celebrated courtesan who is approaching, we are informed, "a certain age." She has a lifelong frenemy in Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), who also made her fortune selling herself to royalty. As the story begins, Lea enters into an affair with Chéri (Rupert Friend), Charlotte's libidinous 19-year-old son. Much to their mutual surprise and joy, they spend six carefree years together. However, Charlotte breaks up the happy couple by arranging a marriage between her son and the daughter of another courtesan. Although Chéri and Lea convinced themselves that their time together was nothing serious, the truth is that they fell madly in love, and that fact leads each of the lovebirds to years of misery while they are apart. While this description gives the impression that Chéri might be a typically staid Masterpiece Theatre/Merchant-Ivory movie, Christopher Hampton's reliably sly script actually contains a healthy amount of razor-sharp dialogue. Pfeiffer and Bates are superb together as gossipy biddies who both long for acceptance into high society, but know it's an impossibility considering their chosen profession. Thanks to their catty banter, the early part of the movie has some real bite. Pfeiffer also generates genuine chemistry with Friend, who uses his male-model looks to great effect throughout the movie -- rarely has a top hat looked so sexy. Chéri exudes a bored entitlement that befits his playful immaturity, and meshes harmoniously with Lea's cynical self-possession -- a mindset she maintains precisely because genuine love is the enemy of the courtesan. Sadly, the long middle section of the movie, when the lovers are separated, is a slog. Hampton adapted the script from a pair of novels by the famous French author Colette, but it feels more like the movie came from a short story that's been padded to reach movie length. Sure, the art direction, photography, and costumes are always a pleasure to look at, but our main characters take so long to do something about their unhappiness that they lose our interest. As good as the actors are, they can't get the momentum back when Chéri and Lea finally see each other again. At the film's conclusion, when Chéri comes to an understanding of how his life turned out, it should have the emotional kick of either tragedy or jet-black comedy, but because the movie never regains the passion it had early on, we're left not feeling much of anything.
