Colette (2018)

Keira Knightley continues her push to become someone other than Elizabeth Swan. She has the talent and the following to make it happen, but she has yet to find anything can be as successful as the high grossing films she has been known for her whole career. This time taking on Colette in her journey of becoming famous in her own right, and not just her husbands. Colette follows the journey of many movies before. The story of women who put in the work for other men to succeed instead. This time in the form of a writer whose credit is all given to the husband. Trying to bring this story arc into something new in 2018 they added the additional element of highlighting a sexual relationship with another woman. Not saying it wasn't happening back then, but every movie feels like it makes the movie "better" or more "Oscar worthy" if they include a up to date reference and topic. This movie gave the audience everything they wanted, there wasn't many secrets to be discovered or a plot to want more answers to. It simply gave a story of a hard-working, sly woman who fought her way to the top. In the end, she is where we all expected with the misfit partners that joined ever so slowly. This won't be Keira's non-pirates' breakthrough

Fmovies: This film was a waste of time. Worse, it was boring. By the time it finished, I didn't care what Collette had accomplished. I think it has to be the writing becaause the actors were fine, I guess. This must be one of those films the actors did to pay the mortgage because even they had to see what a snoozefest this script was.

This movie is truly beautiful to watch. Elegant period dress, recreations of turn-of-the-century Paris inside and out that had me wondering how they were achieved. And the acting by the two principles is truly first-rate.

Keira Knightley has it all and does it all as the title character. A truly beautiful performance, including some line-reading that was worthy of Shakespeare - which this screenplay most certainly is not. (See below.) She held me riveted in many a scene.

Not far behind her in the acting dept is Dominic West, who turns Willy into a real if very flawed human being. Modern literary history sees him through Colette's later eyes, so it dismisses him terribly, but here he comes off as a real charmer.

So what's not to like? A great deal, unfortunately. The script, at least through the first half of the movie, is paint by numbers: very obvious, very flat, very unrevealing. Though Knightley clearly could have conveyed anything, it doesn't do a good job of helping us to understand the very complex woman we see. Too often, it sounds like a summary of a Wikipedia biography of the author. What made her so interesting? What made her tick? What made her so remarkable? The script gives us no clue. Is it because the script was written by two men and, third billing, one woman? I don't buy that. Madame Bovary was written by a man, as were many other great female characters in literature. Perhaps the problem lies, at least in part, with the directing as well.

If you want to see this movie, I would wait until you can watch it at home, so you can pause it to do other things when you get bored or just want a break. Having to sit through all 111 minutes in a theater without a break was too much for me - though it did get more involving near the end. Kudos to Knightley and West, certainly, for doing a great job with their roles. But this was too much like a beautifully costumed and filmed history lesson, and not enough like an engaging story.

Colette fmovies. This is a dreary film, devoid of the originality of the artist it purports to celebrate. The production design reeks of research: so many shots derive from familiar canvases of Renoir, Seurat, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and their contemporaries that the cinematographer might just as well have been filming scenes in front of such canvases at the National Gallery. The leaden screenplay plods along with attempts at bon mots dying in the mouths of those two affable duffers Kiera Knightley and Dominic West, but what charm they have can't save them in this. Wan, winsome Knightley in particular is totally miscast as a person whose energy bursts through her work, someone whose charisma is evident in every photograph taken of her. Denise Gough, Fiona Shaw and some of the other performers offer the best support they can, but they haven't got a hope.

I kept thinking of how perfect Ms Knightley was in Joe Wright's imaginative take on ANNA KARENINA. I felt really quite sorry for her, and everybody else, at the end of this. It's not as if it was really bad. If it were, it might have been fun. Instead, we get deadly mediocrity.

One star for effort, and another for pity's sake.

I'm impressed by the sharp script, for me it's a comedy movie which addresses the theme of homosexuality with subtlety. The life of Gabrielle Colette was pretty interesting and I had good impressions about this film, because it can dialogue with different public.

My thoughts regarding Collette are conflicted to say the least. On one hand, the film is a well-acted, complex love story. On the other hand, it's a well-acted mess that doesn't know what it wants to say. I'll begin by covering the one element of the film I know I liked: the leads. Keira Knightly and Dominic West are a great onscreen couple. They both have human flaws, but the script also acknowledges the true affection between them. In addition to their romance, they also share a relationship as business partners, adding another layer of complexity to their relationship. Through the progression of this love story, I didn't hate one or idolize the other, which I admired on a screenwriting level. However, about halfway through the film, the dialogue and tone start to side with Collette more and more even though the previous scenes never indicated the story held this ethical position. I understand that her name is the title of the picture, but there are still biographical films that don't necessarily support the central figure's motives or actions. In the first hour or so, the film seemed to simply display Colette's life without assigning the roles of a good or bad guy. The story focused and kept the central dramatic elements in check. After this, Colette starts, I don't want to say "falling apart", rather biting off more than it can chew. New characters are introduced quite literally out of nowhere even though they play very important roles. Colette also starts pursuing a career in theatre for reasons that are never really explained. And her husband Willy (Dominic West) is suddenly made out to as the film's antagonist. I would not mind this dramatic shift if more time was dedicated to the relationship. But like I said, there are so many separate events unfolding in the last hour or so that it's impossible to make sense of it all. In fact, the end credits reveal even more important events took place later in her life, that I quite frankly would have liked to see. I think the film makers struggled deciding what approach to use while telling this story. At first, the film seemed purely subjective as it took a neutral stance and simply showed the events one after another. Perhaps the writers later decided they weren't comfortable with this approach and took a one-sided angle for the rest of the project. I don't prefer one point of view over the other, but I wish Colette would have committed to a single method of cinematic storytelling. I've though about this film a lot and have decided to give it a small recommendation. It is a well acted, well-directed, and well-shot picture from beginning to end, but there is a distracting perspective shift that audiences should be aware of.