Molière
By Caroline Planque
Posted
August 12,
2007
In 1644, the French
playwright, Molière, went missing for a few months
— and it was never explained. Laurent Tirard creates a fictional
illustration of the whereabouts of the playwright during those
lost months; in the style that Molière would have used to write
one of his plays.
Molière,
which closed this year’s 33rd Seattle International Film
Festival, will ravish the Northwest film buffs with its French
style and lightheartedness about the matters of love. Casting
Romain Duris as a young and modern Molière, this comedy of
manners offers a refreshing look at the work of a playwright one
might have dismissed as old-fashioned. Widely distributed
abroad, the international appeal of the movie lies in its
idealized image of France through the use of language and
settings.
Tirard, a French
filmmaker who studied in New York and worked in Los Angeles
before heading back home, confesses that he is more interested
in the works of Molière than in the man himself. “I wanted to
make a film that would resemble one of his plays,” said Tirard.
“Moreover, I wanted to take Molière himself and throw him inside
this play.” Tirard rediscovered the works of Molière three years
ago and realized how brilliant and contemporary his writings
were, and that he could borrow from each of his plays to make
his film.
The movie was well
received in France by literature teachers, who were enthusiastic
about this new approach to one of France’s most studied authors,
but less so by history teachers who did not understand the logic
behind it: why create a fiction that could be taken for facts by
their students?
In the end, Tirard
is convinced that most people will not be confused. It is all
about how things are presented, he says, and he trusts the
public to be more intelligent. He admits that he does “feel
insulted when a filmmaker explains too much in a movie” and
therefore wants to let the viewers figure out for themselves the
feature’s openly extravagant plot.
More info at:
www.moliere-lefilm.com
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