Moliere – French Comedy or French Tragedy? You Decide

The Movie Review Squad is giving “The Brave One” another miss because this time round, TK could not make it. We picked “Moliere” instead because Cynthia suddenly has this craving for a high dosage of picture house type of art movie – in French.

I was prepared to fall asleep over watching the life story of a French playwright and actor who, by the way, is considered as one of the greatest masters of comedy in the Western literature on screen. Seriously, do we need another “Shakespeare In Love”? And I was wrong. “Moliere” is entertaining from the beginning to end filled with witty well crafted scripts, superb acting, beautiful costume, and a playful soundtrack to go along with the drama. The story “Moliere” itself is fictional inspired by some of Moliere’s (his real name is Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) significant works as well as real people that existed around him during 1600s. If you subscript to the concept that an artist’s work is inspired by his or her real life events, you may buy the idea that from the artist’s work, one may be able to reconstruct what has inspired him or her in the first place.

The movie “Moliere” is segmented in two parts – Moliere’s triumphant return to Paris after touring the countryside for 13 years and what happened to him 13 years ago. It is the latter that takes up much of the entire movie’s length. A good portion of the movie is comedy. I could not stop myself from bursting into laughter scene after scene. Despite the fact that “Moliere” entertains the audience through comedy, the underlying mood of the movie – in my opinion and true to Moliere’s own preference – is a tragedy. It is so well crafted that it makes you laugh and cry at the same time. (Cynthia did shed some tears over the movie.)

Out of all the wonderful actors and actresses of “Moliere”, I wish to single out Romain Duris as my favorite actor in the movie – quite possibly my favorite French actor of all time. The first movie I noticed Romain Duris is “Peut-etre” (1999) when I was working in Paris. A classic sci-fi movie by the way that has a bizarre story of a man at the year 2000 party emerged into the future from an attic meeting his future family members and his future-self. Since then, I enjoy watching “L’Auberge Espagnole” (2002) – English title as “The Spanish Apartment” – and the sequel “Russian Dolls” (2005) when he played against my all time favorite French actress Audrey Tautou. In “Moliere”, Romain Duris’s acting is convincing.

Not to be missed if you are into French movies or art movies in general. “Moliere” is not one of those over exaggerated romantic comedy nor one that is full of dramatic twist and turn. You have to appreciate the beauty of the scripts and the amount of acting poured in in order to enjoy this.