The young Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) will leave its Burgundy birthplace, and his life of wildvine, lover of nature and animals, to marry the dashing Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West). Soon, the docket of engineering alternates between low blows and gifts. After having discovered the talent of his wife, he begins to exploit without scruple. On his side, Colette discovers his taste for women and for freedom.
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“Nothing sparkles in this Colette academic where the artistic Paris and socialite of the time seems sad to die,” insists Véronique Cauhapé of the World . “This biopic remains an academic exercise, almost documentary,” adds François Forest in the columns of the Nouvel Observateur . “We do not pass on the absence of passion, breathless, storm-t-it. And summarizes, a shame when one knows the temperament of the author of The Ingenue libertine : “It is a clean film, with no soul.”
The Records of Cinema , Julie Loncin regrets besides, this “images singularly smooth and as agreed, for an artist who was far from being so”. It puts an end to the “american” of the director Wash Westmoreland. An explanation echoed by Thierry Chèze in First . According to him, Colette “was not necessarily a vocation to emerge in France”. “Everything is a little too good, a little too clean, a little too smooth”, he laments.
But Thierry Chèze has, nevertheless, enjoyed the benefit of the actress Keira Knightley in the skin of one of the most unique literary figures in france: “It confirms his skill in the performance of the film in costume.”. “She made a Colette more convincing as a woman of letters playful as a young girl from the countryside to the accent of burgundy”, the judge from his side, Camille Nevers to Release . More categorical, François Forest (Obs) says that”it resembles neither from near nor from far away to Colette”.
Télérama , Cécile Mury says: if it is “interchangeable”, “the spectacle of this artistic awakening, evenings decadent in walks bucolic, is not unpleasant”. Ditto for Marie-Noëlle Tranchant Figaro . She calls this a biopic of”evocation pleasantly anecdotal” made to illustrate the liberation of the conventions of a woman of the early Twentieth century. And, in the end, he was grateful to meet its sub-title: ” A modern woman.”
