| Related Item |
 |
|
|
|
|
‘Colonel Chabert’
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 17, 1995
|
|
|
|
|
|
An engrossing adaptation of Balzac's novel, "Colonel Chabert" explores a Napoleonic War hero's tragic attempt to reconnect with a society that no longer recognizes him nor shares his passions. Chabert, who was left for dead 10 years earlier, returns to find his wife remarried and his fortune inaccessible. Worst of all, he concludes that French society has been revolutionized only in its increasing cynicism.Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant star as Chabert and his former wife, who has long since traded some of Chabert's money for a husband with a title. While her new husband, Count Ferraud (Andre Dussollier), still needs her financial support, he longs to dissolve the lowly marriage to achieve his lofty political aims. The last thing the countess needs is a resurrected first husband. Nobody knows this better than her lawyer, Derville (Fabrice Luchini), coincidentally the one man in all of Paris who believes Chabert's story. A meddler with a Machiavellian bent, Derville decides to help Chabert regain his place and teach the countess a lesson. In any case, he does what he believes is just for both his clients -- not at all what either of them, or the audience, might expect. Depardieu's girth and awkwardness serve him well as Chabert, so miserably depressed and uncomfortable in this awful new world. He and Ardant are physically well matched, and she is quite wonderful as the self-protective countess. Yves Angelo, a cinematographer whose artistry has graced such films as "Tous les Matins du Monde" and "Un Coeur en Hiver," debuts as a co-writer and director with this elegant work. While the story's potential for melodrama is great, Angelo steers his cast toward small gestures and subtle phrasing, though Depardieu does on occasion bang around like a loosely moored barge. Further, Angelo's eye for images is matched by his ear for musical accompaniment, especially in the elegiac battle scenes blessed somehow by Beethoven. Those scenes, which are contrasted against the frippery of Restoration society, wordlessly convey poor Chabert's realization that these fools weren't worth fighting for. Better to have died after all. Colonel Chabert, in French with subtitles, is not rated.
|
Save money with NextCard Visa
