Molière (2007)

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If you have already seen this movie you may come to know that it was the similar story theme to 'Shakespeare in Love'. That is not what I was going to say, this movie really did some magic spell on me because absolutely loved the movie all the way from top to bottom. The settings and the costumes, wow, very impressive, looked so natural. You know, most of the commercial flick that sets in the peri... read more

Description: In 1644, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Romain Duris), known as Moliere, is a writer, director, and actor performing in comedies with his own theatre troupe in France. But his career comes to a screeching halt when he's put in prison for the company's debts. One day he is released and taken to visit Monsieur Jordain (Fabrice Luchi), a wealthy bourgeois gentleman who agrees to pay his debts if the penniless playwright will help him on a secret project. He is madly in love with the young and beautiful marquise Celimene (Ludivine Sagnier) and has written a one-act play he wants to perform at her salon as a sign of his adoration. Jordain h In 1644, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Romain Duris), known as Moliere, is a writer, director, and actor performing in comedies with his own theatre troupe in France. But his career comes to a screeching halt when he's put in prison for the company's debts. One day he is released and taken to visit Monsieur Jordain (Fabrice Luchi), a wealthy bourgeois gentleman who agrees to pay his debts if the penniless playwright will help him on a secret project. He is madly in love with the young and beautiful marquise Celimene (Ludivine Sagnier) and has written a one-act play he wants to perform at her salon as a sign of his adoration. Jordain has come up with a disguise for Moliere, introducing him as a priest named Tartuffe hired to tutor his youngest daughter. The one unexpected problem in his well-planned scheme is that Moliere falls in love with Jordain's wife Elmire (Laura Morante).

Complications abound in this well-acted and very funny costume drama directed by Laurent Tirard. One of them is that Jordain's go-between in his envisioned seduction of Celimene is Dorante (Edouard Baer), a scheming aristocrat who is playing him for all he's got. His end goal is to have his son Thomas (Gillian Petrovsky) marry Jordain's daughter Henriette (Fanny Valette), whose heart already belongs to her music teacher Valere (Gonzague Requillart). The second major complication is that Moliere must find a way to seduce Elmire. It turns out that she is an ardent fan of theatre and he finds a way to his desire by giving her a chance to act.

Screenplay writers Laurent Tirard and Gregoire Vigneron have fashioned a delightful drama that revolves around a fictional turning point in the life of the famous French playwright. Moilere is tired of comedy and wants to perform a tragedy, convinced that this form more realistically and nobly deals with the human experience. But his time at the luxurious estate of Monsieur Jordain convinces him that comedy can also deal with deep subjects, albeit with a lightness and deftness that is not in the realm of tragedy. Elmire draws out Moilere's passion but, in the end, it is her wise advice about inventing a new kind of comedy — comedy that makes one weep — which sets his life on the course that made him a major name in theatrical history.

The stellar performances by Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, and Laura Morante are masterful in their wit, nuance, and brightness of spirit. ... (more) (less)