Every so often the inevitable happens and I'm faced with a film that I want to see with a leading actor I can't stand. So it is here; I accept that Romain Duris has his admirers and good luck to him but to me he's just another ugly, smirking, journeyman actor like Gaspard Ulliel and Benoit Magimal. To make matters worse - from my point of view - they even added Ludvine Sagnier to the mix; I've always contended that Ludo can't act with her clothes on and Boy, does she prove me right here though on the plus side she only has about fifteen minutes of screen time in two hours. That leaves Fabrice Luchini and Laura Morante to carve up the acting honours equally with Edward Baer finishing a notable third. If you know and admire Moliere - and if you know him it's hard NOT to admire him - then you can wallow in the references plus lines from his works that punctuate the plot, such as it is - M. Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), for example, was the bourgeois gentilhomme who was delighted to discover that he'd been speaking prose all his life whilst Moliere becomes a member of Jordain's household under the pseudonym Tartuffe and so on. There's a nod to Preston Sturges and Sullivan's Travels inasmuch as Moliere begins by stating to his troupe that he has had it up to here with comedy and wants to write a tragedy and coming to realize at the end of the film that laughter is, after all, the best medicine. The photography is excellent and if the direction is slow at times and always unimaginative anyone who has ever laughed at a Moliere comedy will almost certainly enjoy it despite Duris' non-performance.
Review of Molière
