Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5671 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-12
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Synopsis
Moliere, the French 17th century playwright behind THE MISANTHROPE and TARTUFFE, gets his SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE treatment in this entertaining romantic comedy-drama. Director Laurent Tirard paints a romantic portrait of the artist as a young man that's a deft mix of fact and fiction, involving wealthy buffoon Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini) who enlists Moliere's help to woo the icy Marquise Celimene (SWIMMING POOL's Ludivigne Sagnier). Jourdain's neglected wife (Laura Morante) regards Moliere's presence in their manor with suspicion (he's posing as a religious scholar). The callow Moliere finds himself drawn to Madame, despite her doubts, and she to him, especially when he helps her in aiding the forbidden romance of her daughter. Backed by a robust orchestral score, sumptuous period detail, and plenty of pratfall-suffused romantic entanglements (lifted from Moliere's plays), the movie bravely steps outside its dramatic outline to become a moving meditation on the meaning of love as selflessness, in the best French tradition of intellectual and romantic discourse. Romain Duris (THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED) is endearing as Moliere, but it's Morante who scores highest, playing yet another in Gallic cinema's many celebrated sexy, intelligent older women.

Synopsis
1644, Paris, and 22-year-old Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, also known as Molière, is not yet the writer that history recognizes as the father and true master of comic satire, author of The Misanthrope and Tartuffe, and a dramatist to rank alongside Shakespeare and Sophocles. Far from it. He is, in fact, a failed actor.

His Illustrious Theatre Troupe, founded the previous year, is bankrupt. Hounded by creditors, Molière is thrown into jail, released, then swiftly imprisoned again. When the jailors finally let him go, he disappears. The combined efforts of historians have unearthed no trace of him before his reappearance, several months later, when his troupe begins touring the provinces - a tour that will last for thirteen years, and culminate in Molière's triumphant return to Paris in 1658.

Customer Reviews

Moliere in Love
This film starts beautifully with Moliere and his troupe arriving in Paris after years on the road trawling the provinces, ready to begin the phase of his life for which he will be remembered. What has brought him to this point and where does his burning drive come from?
The bulk of the film tells us just that, and a very imaginative and wonderfully realised journey it is, weaving incidents from the famous plays into the entertainingly convoluted plot. Laura Morante as the love interest and Moliere's muse is fabulous but some of the scenes are stagy (when they are not meant to be)and finally it's very sumptuousness distracts from what could have been a moving portrait of the artistic temperament.

Molière in love
Well, this movie is not so bad after all. It is well filmed, it has everything you expect from a french movie portraying the "grand siècle": excellent actors, good costumes, well-chosen sceneries but... the story is rather awful. Im am not even getting into historical accuracy since it is not what you should expect from this kind of cinema. It's just that it seems like a french remake of John Madden's "Shakespeare in love". The same kind of humour, the occasional references to the writer's work and a damned serious touch in the end - it is exactly the same thing. It is not so bad, but it bears a feeling of déjà-vu...

A splendid movie about France's Shakespeare, not to be missed
Wonderful movie, brilliantly made and acted, especially Fabrice Lucchini who is a favourite of mine but everyone else is superb also.

My one hesitation is the use of a very long flashback. I wish they'd kept to straight chronological, but I imagine the flashback is more effective in France where unlike me they will recognise all the allusions to Moliere plays. I could guess that much or most (or all?) of the action was based on his plays but mostly not pick them out.

A very neat story, plenty of humour and some poignant moments too. A superior movie.