12A, 120mins
Laurent Tirard’s French costume drama Molière is as soothing and conventional as The Antiques Road-show. Thematically, it is almost an exact copy of John Madden’s smash hit Shakespeare in Love. Tirard picks a missing chapter in the itinerant playwright’s life when he is being hounded by bailiffs while trying to make a name for himself as an actor. His bankrupt theatre troupe depend on his comedies for their daily bread. Yet Romain Duris’s gloomy farceur aches to create tragedy, the purest and noblest form of theatre.
Tirard’s script, devised with Gr?goire Vigneron, is an exceptionally tight piece of writing. It has the rhythm and structure of a vintage Molière comedy and the sophistication of a contemporary romantic potboiler. The hapless actor is bailed out of a debtors’ prison by an immensely wealthy merchant Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), who needs the maestro to teach him how to act. He has written a play that he wants to perform to Ludivine Sagnier’s delicious but poisonous aristocrat, C?limène, to court her favours. But his wife Elmire (Laura Morante) must never find out. Molière is forced to disguise himself as a priest while he resides at Jourdain’s country pile. These, of course, are stock characters in any number of Molière’s farces.
The romantic tease is the life-changing impact these “real” people will actually have on the young dramatist’s future. The acting is as squeakily sharp as the production values. The palace and costumes are preposterously lavish. And Duris is a quicksilver joy as the earthy, angry, and love-struck poet. Yet the film feels distinctly skinny, as if half the cast haven’t arrived. The symmetry of the story is almost too perfect. Several leaps of faith are wildly silly. But the imperfect romance between the idealistic Molière and the magnetic Morante as the older (married) woman touches moments of pure melancholy.