Molière me fait rire

Yesterday was a super-busy day: I went from my Versailles lit class to the Musée d'Orsay for a guided tour by my art history professor to a showing of Molière in a teeny little theater buried deep in the Latin quarter.


(from canoe.com)

I was planning on seeing this movie when it came out in the US, but I hadn't gotten around to it before I left. My school paid for this, since two of the classes are studying Molière's plays, so I got a free showing.

The only thing I was apprehensive about was the fact that the FRENCH movie was being shown in FRANCE to FRENCH people-- so of course, the movie is in not English. Also, there are no subtitles. I can usually get the general idea from French films even without subtitles, but I usually miss the little jokes and asides that make a film worth seeing. But for Molière, I was proud how well I understood.

The movie is sort of a poor man's Shakespeare in Love. It follows Molière through an experience he eventually turns into a play (in this case, two-- one of them is Tartuffe, which I just read). Instead of falling in love with Gwyneth Paltrow, Molière poses as a dévot in a nobleman's household. Essentially, he is hired to secretly help the nobleman win the love of a beautiful Marquise, played by Ludivine Sagnier (of Paris, Je T'aime and Swimming Pool). In the process though, he falls in love with the nobleman's wife, and they have an affair and he helps save the daughter's future, etc. etc.

Anyways.

I really, really liked it. The only thing I had a problem understanding was the nobleman's wife, Elmire-- the actress is Italian, and her manner of speaking makes the French difficult to get. The chronology of the film is also a bit confusing, because the first few scenes jump 13 years with only a small subtitle and some gray in Molière's eyebrows to let you know what's going on.

I got some of the jokes (like when the sour-faced servant helps the family by distracting a guest so he leaves, the servant tells Molière he is a method actor), and I loved Romain Duris. I've never watched one of his movies without subtitles, and I realized his mouth is extremely mesmerizing: He has big lips and an oddly broken front tooth. He also speaks French very sexily. Did I mention he's hot?

I was extremely embarassed by the wigs, however. Eek.

Romain Duris doing the horse bit, the nobleman dressing in drag, and the hiding under the table scene were also high points for me. I didn't love the ending, but it was extremely French. Also, a lot of the movie was filmed at the Chateau de Courances, which I just visited this past weekend. Highly recommended.

In other news, I'll be in Munich starting tomorrow and I'm coming back ass-crack early on Monday. Hopefully I won't have so much fun that I won't be able to make my noon class that day. Ja!