COLETTE

Keira Knightley is totally miscast as the title character in COLETTE, but as always she so completely commits to the role she overcomes that obstacle. And it doesn't hurt that the cinematography and art production on this film are Oscar worthy, and the filmmakers so Britishize the iconic French author's story, they even use "Down By The Salley Gardens" to fill in for a French provincial song!

In my thirties I attended a fancy dinner party in New York with the cream of the Manhattan cultural elite (at least as I saw it then) where someone asked my opinion of Colette (as a writer) and I admitted I hadn't read her. A shocked silence ensued until the poet and dance critic Edwin Denby saved me by saying, "How I envy you Michael, that you have that to look forward to."

Needless to say I went out the next day and bought every book of hers translated into English and every book about her. She soon became one of my favorite authors and people. COLETTE the film focuses on her emergence from the French countryside to become the famous author she still is. Part of the reason I fell in love with Colette and her story was her unconventional sex life, which I identified with, as well as her talent for reinventing herself and her life. And this movie captures that lusciously.

Worth seeing (for my taste).