Molière

Plot synopsis:
The film begins in 1658, when the French actor and playwright returns to Paris with his theatrical troupe to perform in the theatre the king's brother has given him. Most of the film is in the form of a flashback to 1645. Following an unsuccessful run as a tragic actor, Molière is released from debtor's prison by Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), a wealthy commoner with social pretensions, who agrees to pay the young actor's debts if Molière teaches him to act.
Jourdain, a married man with two daughters, hopes to use this talent to ingratiate himself with Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier), a recently widowed aristocrat with whom he has become obsessed. He hopes to perform a short play he has written for the occasion. Molière, however, has been presented to the family and staff of Monsieur Jourdain as Tartuffe, a priest who is to serve as tutor for the Jourdains' younger daughter. As the story progresses Molière proceeds to fall in love with Jourdain's neglected wife, Elmire (Laura Morante). Sub-plots involve the love life of the Jourdains' older daughter, and the intrigues of the penniless and cynical aristocrat Dorante (Édouard Baer) at the expense of the gullible Jourdain.
The story is mostly fictional and many scenes follow actual scenes and text in Molière's plays including Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, The Imaginary Invalid, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, whose principal character is also named Jourdain. It is implied that these "actual" events in his life inspired the plays of his maturity.

Tags: romantic

Review:
While New York Times film critic A.O. Scott may rail at the "fundamentally bogus and anti-literary idea that the great writers of the past wrote what they knew", there is still a pervasive longing out there to discover the connection between an author's life and his work.
The audacious premise that great art reflects an author's life experience is promoted in films such as John Madden's Shakespeare in Love and now in Moliére, Laurent Tirard's speculative costume drama of the great French playwright.
While the suggestion that the mystery of genius lies in a secret love affair borders on the banal, these films attempt to give us a sense of who these great artists were as people and what may have been at least one source of their inspiration.Like Shakespeare in Love, Moliére uses guesswork, imagination, and creativity to fill in the blanks when the facts are not readily available.
It was there that he toured with his Illustre Theatre for 13 years before arriving in Paris convinced that tragedy was the only true theater.Of course, what is not known is what inspired him to take a comic turn, but Tirard allows us to imagine characters and situations that might have led to such great works as "Tartuffe" and "Le Bourgeois Gentlhomme" and 28 other plays which roast the upper classes as affected hypocrites and worse.
Soulfully and convincingly performed by Romain Duris, who has been known for dramatic roles such as the pianist in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Moliére is rescued from prison by a bumbling aristocrat named Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini).
Jourdain has written a one-act play that he wants to perform at the salon of the haughty widow, marquise Celimene (Ludivine Sagnier) with whom he is smitten.Paying Moliére's debts, he hires him to teach him the skills of an actor while tricking his graceful wife Elmire (Laura Morante) into believing that he is a priest named Mr. Tartuffe who has come only to counsel his daughter in matters of religion.
This ruse runs into problems when Tartuffe/Moliére's falls in love with Madame Jourdain; however their relationship becomes a transforming experience for the actor/playwright when she suggests that he concentrate on writing a different kind of comedy, one that probes the emotions of a drama.Complications are plentiful as the story moves from comedy to farce, to tragedy and back again with the assistance of a scheming count named Dorante (Edouard Baer) whose goal is to marry his son Thomas (Gillian Petrovsky) to Jourdain's daughter Henriette (Fanny Valette) regardless of the fact that Henriette is in love with her music teacher Valere (Gonzague Requillart).
The film wins big, and hopefully will be nominated for best French film, director and actor (Romain Duris) when the Césars roll around next spring.Molière is France's Shakespeare and his life and plays might not be familiar to most Americans.
So French director Laurent Tirard decided three years ago to make a film that would bring the work and escapades of the famed writer more accessible to audiences.
Tirard co-wrote the screenplay and assembled a top notch cast including Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), Fabrice Luchini (Intimate Strangers), Laura Morante (Avenue Montaigne) Edouard Baer (The Story of My Life), and the always wonderful Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool).The story begins with Jean-Baptists Poquelin aka Molière (Duris) frantically trying to decide if he is to do a tragedy for his next play in front of the esteemed royal family despite the fact they desperately want a comedy.
Bits and pieces of the rest of story seem familiar to anyone who's read Molière's plays, as this film sets the stage that these events inspire Molière to be the comedy writer that he became.The film wins on many levels.
This film will remind you of "Shakespeare in Love" and "Becoming Jane." It tries to correlate the artist's experiences--about which we can only speculate--with his or her art, about which we know a great deal.
Laurent Tirard's costume comedy "Molière" finds comparison with "Shakespeare in Love" rather easily, and perhaps most dauntingly, to its legendary subject's own durable narratives.
But while there's not as much details missing from the 17th-century French playwright Moliere's (Romain Duris) life as there was in Shakespeare's, there's still ample room for a fanciful imagination and conjecture.The window is small, for Tirard and co-writer Grégoire Vigneron to present the missing weeks of Molière's life after his brief imprisonment for not paying his debts, just before he embarked with his troupe on a 13-year tour of the French provinces before his triumphant return to the theatre scene in Paris.
The driving point in this film, as it was in "Shakespeare in Love", is how great art tends to imitate life and how muses tend to stem from elaborate romances, which in this case is Molière's torrid affair with the wealthy Monsieur Jourdain's (Fabrice Luchini) wife Elmire (an enthralling Laura Morante).Tirard's first salvo and indeed the one that sustains its premise throughout the end, is his understanding that a film about Molière has to be a farce, an important element that shapes his later and most important works when romance, gender politics and the moral bankruptcy of the French aristocracy become his staples.
It would seem to be inspired by the success of "Shakespeare In Love" in terms of plot and structure, namely the trials and tribulations of the French literary icon during his struggling early years.Moliere narrates the tale, recalling his financial difficulties as the head of a bankrupt troupe of actors.
If the story becomes a bit too convoluted at times, trying to paste together a story that parallels the French playwright's most famous plays, 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' and 'Tartuffe' as the basis for the missing portion of Molière's life, and drags on a bit too long at two hours, it is never less that gorgeous to look at and witty to hear.Jean-Baptiste Poquelin or Molière (Romain Duris) is an actor and playwright for a comedy troupe that tours the provinces of France, spending himself into debtor's prison.
Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini) to travel to his estate for the purpose of teaching the dilettante how to write plays and to act in order to win the affection of a wealthy young Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier) while keeping his daughter and his wife Elmire (Laura Morante) at bay.
There are many subplots that tend to distract but in the end the 'play' created by Molière's presence and interaction with all of the other characters provides the life lessons and food for material that leads Molière to be the greatest of French playwrights.The cast is superb, the visual effects are opulent, the musical score is period correct, and the cinematography finds a fine balance between the lush vistas of the countryside and estates and the grimy realism of the prison and small theaters.
This fictional and fantasist biography is a sort of "what if" Molière had meet in his youth all the characters he'll use as figures to his future plays : Jourdain, Elmire, Doriante, and had also experience the comical situations he'll re-transcript later on stage : Molière pretends to be Tartufe in order to learn to act to M.
But no mistakes here, "Molière", if you put aside the painful introduction and the final scene of the movie, isn't a reflection on art and life and their interconnection, in an "Amadeus"'s style : if it tells us Molière's life as a Molière'play, it's merely to give us a simple and shallow, but quite enjoyable comedy, far from the abyssal questions such a supposition could have arise.There's plenty of good ideas in the movie, which underline the comical side of the original idea, but never reach its full potential.
And if the actors are independently all very good, they don't really match with one another : it's like if they all were in different movies.Romain Duris is excellent in a intense (anyway, he's always too intense) and tortured Molière, but he is hardly in a comedy : his character seems too deep in comparison to the others, for they're merely comical stereotypes from Molière's plays.
So, at the end, all you have is a funny little french comedy, whereas it could have had the intensity and the deep of "Amadeus".And by the way, if you like fictions based on famous writer's life, I advise you to watch "Les larmes blanches" by Grégory Rateau if you have a chance to see it.
Molière 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' and 'Tartuffe' and his own life M Jourdaine a complete foolYou do not have to be familiar with the works of Molière to enjoy this film, though it's much, much more likely you will if you have seen or read his plays.
This is hard to follow because Romain Duris (as Molière) looks pretty much the same through the 13 year course of the film.
See the film.The story plays much like a production by Molière--combined with a few facts from the playwright's life.
This movie is a true delight for Moliere's fans.A good knowledge of his plays is useful but the screenplay is strong enough to grab someone who is not particularly interested in them.The story is essentially based on "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" (aka "the middle class gentleman" ) and "Tartuffe" with elements borrowed from "Le Misanthrope" ,"Les Femmes Savantes" ,"L'Avare " and "Les Fourberies De Scapin" .Now the lines are directly taken from the writer ,now they are written in his style .Each character represents two or three other characters:the wonderful Fabrice Lucchini is Monsieur Jourdain and Orgon,Romain Duris is Molière and Tartuffe ,Laura Morante is Elmire and Madame Jourdain and the excellent Edouard Baer ,Dorante ,Alceste and some kind of "Grand Turc" .Agatha Christie disappeared when her husband left her and as nobody knew what she did in those days they made a movie about it in the late seventies ("Agatha" ,Michael Apted).So why not Molière?In France ,some critics such as the reliable Claude Bouliq Mercier slagged off Tirard's movie ,proving that they can be prodigious snobs themselves sometimes;of course they spoke in the name of culture,of art ,of Molière -who -was one-more-time-betrayed ,they do not have any sense of humor.Molière meeting his famous characters before writing his plays (after all they were inspired by the society he lived in) is pure fiction,and should not be taken too seriously:hence the failure with the French intellectual audience who praises to the skies any sequence of Woody Allen's films .I remember a teacher who could captivate his class with "Le Misanthrope" .He often made us laugh .I remembered him when I was watching"Molière" ,particularly the so-called "scene des Petits Marquis " updated by Celimène/Dorimène .Thank you,Mr Tirard.NB :should not be mistaken for Ariane Mnouchkine's eponymous work (1978).
There's a period of a few months in 1644 when the French playwright Molière, then only 22, fell through the cracks of history, and Laurant Tirard's film 'Moliere' (co-written with Grégoire Vigneron) makes up a story to fill the gap.
According to the film, he has an adventure that leads him wisely to reorient his work in the direction of comedy after being urged to do so by a lovely woman with whom he has a brief affair after being hired as a sort of ghost writer for her husband.
He is a pretentious and very wealthy businessman who wants the young writer to pen clever material for him to pass off as his own and thereby impress a witty young woman who's the star of a salon.The wealthy businessman is the supple Fabrice Lucchini , his lovely wife is the beautiful Laura Morante, Moliere is a be-wigged Romain Duris, and the witty salon chick is Ludivine Sagnier.
Lucchini is at the center of the film and his character is more complex than Duris' playwright, who's more buffoonish most of the time than the bourgeois fool.
The underlying assumption--though I'm not sure how seriously one should take it--is that Moliere based his characters on actual people, and had to be told by a lover what genre to work in--comedy.
The entirety of this movie is focused on the relationship between Molière and Madame Jourdain, while it should have accurately portrayed the content of his plays.
The commentary by director Laurent Tirard on the making of MOLIERE raises the understanding of the art of the film from good to excellent.
In explaining the relation of scenes and characters from Moliere's plays to scenes and characters in the film, Tirard transcends the art of biography.
Molière : Director Laurent Tirard has created an excellent film about a dramatist whose name would always be synonymous with "good french"..
As far as French language is concerned, the importance of Molière seems to grow with each passing year as not only is he read in large numbers by literature conscious public in France but his plays translated into different foreign languages are also staged all over the world.
Director Laurent Tirard's film "Molière" presents a very good visual representation of what the actual 'Molière' must have looked like and under what circumstances did he live ?
It is the light tone of this film which makes it different from that of Ariane Mnouchkine which was a very formal exercise in getting closer to Molière with excessive focus on théâtre in the life of the great playwright.
French actor Romain Duris is able to do perfect justice to his role as a Molière who knew a lot about hypocrisies of aristocrats and how to deal with them.
because all is seductive - the story, the performances, a Moliere young and with a delicate mission, the humor who transforms the biopic in one of the plays of the lead character.
The story sets in the mid 17th century France, where a popular countryside writer and actor, Molière, goes to Paris to conduct one of his play.
A French-language review of "Molière" (accessible under IMDb's External Reviews) compares this movie to "Shakespeare in Love," and that's probably the easiest way to sum it up.
Instead, they fictionalize a period of a few months when the playwright in question was young, brooding, amorous, in need of money and constantly getting into scrapes.When this movie begins, Molière (Romain Duris) is a young actor who wants to play great tragic roles but finds that his comic mugging gets more applause.
Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), a middle-aged merchant who has written a play that he hopes will impress the witty Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier), hires Molière to help him stage it.
In other words, the movie playfully suggests that Molière didn't invent his famous characters and plots out of thin air, but stole them from experiences he'd had as a young man.This premise could leave "Molière" feeling like nothing but one big in-joke, enjoyable only if you already know a lot about the author.
Luchini, Sagnier, Morante and others do a good job of incarnating their stock characters, and Duris makes a very charismatic, humorous, passionate Molière.
The tone switches from farcical comedy to heavy drama (centered on a deathbed scene, believe it or not), and the movie makes the reductive point that everything works out happily at the end of Molière's plays because his own life didn't work out quite so neatly.
That comedy can also illuminate the human condition is the lesson that the young Moliere learns in this fictional story.The film has been called a French 'Shakespeare in Love'.
Both end on a happy note after a good deal of individual sadness.The film's historical authenticity underpins the social satire lying at the heart of Moliere plays.
Or, to put it the other way round, that the story-line is based on the later plays and characters of Moliere.Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini and Laura Morante all give fine performances as the main protagonists.
However, I expect the French, knowing Moliere's plays well, may be happy with this flashback approach as they could do what I mostly couldn't, pick out all the allusions to specific Moliere plays.In France the word comedy is used as it used to be used in England in Shakespeare's time - it didn't mean a knockabout farce or a barrel of laughs, but a story which follows certain guidelines for entertainment and likely to include some comic sequences.
This is an excellent comedy with both laughs and sharper moments.Particular accolades to Fabrice Lucchini for another fine performance because he is a favourite of mine, but also accolades to all the actors, the director, the camera people, everyone.I shall certainly be looking up Moliere's plays to discover some of the sources for myself.
Thirteen years before finding fame as a playwright, Molière (Romain Duris) is a debt ridden actor leading his own unsuccessful acting troupe.
Thrown into gaol as a result of this debts, he is saved by a rich, middle aged benefactor Monsieur Romain (Fabrice Luchini) who, desperate to attract a young widow (Ludivine Sagnier), hires Molière to teach him how to act.
While working with Monsieur Romain, Molière starts to develop feelings for Madame Romain (Laura Morante)...I really liked "Molière", even if it did not turn out to be the full blown French farce that it could have been.
Good performances from everybody, especially Fabrice Luchini as Monsieur Romain who plays, frankly, a true horse's ass.
The photography is excellent and if the direction is slow at times and always unimaginative anyone who has ever laughed at a Moliere comedy will almost certainly enjoy it despite Duris' non-performance..
But an old acquaintance gives him the inspiration to write a comedy that both entertain and touch, inspired by what he himself experienced just before he went on tour.Comments: The movie is supposedly a modern adaption and combination of Molière's own plays Tartuffe and The Bourgeois Gentleman.
He has a beautiful, intelligent wife but has desires upon an attractive and witty courtesan with whom he is enthralled.Molière is hired to coach Jourdain in presenting in a play he has composed in order to entice the courtesan.