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Sex, money and power are at the heart of the story in Cheri.
What's not to like?
Cheri, which is based on the novel by Colette, is the story of an aging courtesan and the boy she educates in the ways of sex and society.
Both are self-interested people; he is a young wastrel, raised to have whatever he wants, and she is a great seductress, careful to avoid love, the only pitfall of her profession.
Love is probably the last thing either of them is looking for.
Of course, they fall in love.
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Cheri is set in the early 1900s in Paris, right at the end of the 'Belle Epoque' -- a time not unlike the contemporary gilded age that so recently evaporated along with subprime mortgages.
The movie begins with a speedy history of the era and its most famous prostitutes, among them Lea de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), both of them exceedingly rich and mostly retired. They're old rivals, which adds a lot of humour to the conversation, but at a certain point these women have no other company but their own -- they live outside polite society.
Peloux has a son of 19, Cheri, who worries her sick. He is rude and lazy, and his mother secretly hopes that Lea de Lonval, who has known the boy since he was born, will teach him a thing or two. To mother's delight, the boy and Lea suddenly entertain a mutual attraction. Lea is flattered by Cheri's attention and happy to help educate him. Cheri is content to gobble up Lea's beauty and her wealth.
What an unlikely pair.
Six years later, they're still living together and loving each other's company.
Cheri's mother is not pleased. She decides to arrange a good marriage for her son, picking for him the beautiful young daughter of another famed courtesan. The young couple will be fabulously rich. Cheri does as his mother asks and marries. Lea is devastated by this betrayal.
But Cheri soon learns that love is not something one can pick up or put down at will. It soon becomes his turn to be devastated.
For all the fabulous costumes, the lavish period detail and the focus on money and status, Cheri is very much a love story. There is a sequence in which Cheri and Lea speak of being orphans; her love for him has a maternal element to it that indicates the intensity of their relationship. In the wide world, each has only the other.
But these star-crossed lovers, decades apart in age, live in a closed world where youth, beauty and wealth are everything, and the judgment of others in that world is harsh. Even without the passage of time, what relationship could survive that sort of pressure?
Both Friend and Pfeiffer are absolutely superb in their roles.
Friend is fearlessly foppish, and terrific at it. Pfeiffer walks a tightrope here, carefully presenting an admirable character who moves through comedy and tragedy without ever becoming ridiculous or pitiable.
It's an extraordinary performance.
Written for the screen by Christopher Hampton and directed by Stephen Frears, the same team behind Dangerous Liaisons, Cheri is beautiful to look at (the cinematographer is Darius Khondji) and quite contemporary in its examination of love, money, social status and the passage of time.
The film is smart, literate and engaging -- at least to this middle-aged viewer. It's likely that the response to Cheri will be very much dictated by age and gender.
(This film is rated 14-A)