Not my CHERI AT ALL!

[deleted]

I enjoyed Michelle, and I think Rupert is a handsome guy, but I think he was miscast here. I would have suggested somebody like James Mcavoy, or Jim Sturgess for the role. Or somebody like newcomer Oliver Coleman (The Other Boleyn Girl, The Line of Beauty) to have played the role.

Thinking in terms of the novel, Cheri should be impeccably beautiful, the more so to juxtappose his character arc: he gradually, with the erosion of time, emerges from a narcissistic world of surface values into a shattering and disillusioning encounter with mortality. In turn, this cruel awakening suggests Europe's transit from the Belle Epoque to World War One. It's the whole Dorian Grey thing, but on a psychological level. A young Monty Clift type, Eric Roberts before the accident, a sort of romping Pan/Adonis.

Lea needs to have a lush sensuality about her--here again the theme of mortality is sounded as she will metamorphize(in Cheri's eyes and in the "real world") from this ripe and rosy state into impending decay, a shedding of the cocoon of beauty and sexuality. Also, the era is represented in the novel as attenuatedly lush, oppulent, full. Food, money, sex, all the trappings of luxury are abundant and excessive. Michelle is lovely but too Hollywood- gaunt and over- preserved to evoke the sense of the era portrayed in the book or Lea's arc.

Like Flaubert's A Sentimental Journey, the tale on a literal level(Cheri One and Cheri Two) is about a young man's coming of age through his growing awareness of the mortal truths, forcing upon him a rueful renunciation of the earlier romanticism. This learning curve isn't a joyful one. In fact, both novels leave the reader with a kind of existential feeling: surface gloss is stripped but idealism also sacrificed. Both novels have layers of meaning; beneath the literal plot and "look of" the universe they depict, there's deeper, more frightening worlds, the first World War, for instance.

It's of some importance then, that in the case of Cheri's casting, that surface world be faithfully replicated. Its surface is European in essence, French especially. Michelle Pfeiffer is too redolant, in her physicality, of AMERICAN cinema circa 1980. But who then? Zsa Zsa Gabor, but with gravitas and acting chops? Who NOW? Someone with curves for sure.

The plump, roseate world--literally and metaphorically--hollows out, dims horribly--until thre's a vision of moral and mortal decay at the end. For this journey to a "world-weary" wisdom or empty-hearted resignation to be realized, the physical corrolaries have to start out absolutely luminous and plump-cheeked in the beginning. Suggestions?

You're right, it's Stephen Frears' Cheri.

Is Jude Law past the point that he would be a wonderful Cheri? sigh...........

[deleted]

Before reading your post, I had already thought of Tom Sturridge! It's crazy to cast K. Bates as the old courtesan mother of Cheri -- good actress but does not have the kind of old sex-appeal, beauty and delicacy the part requires. And Pfeiffer I also think is too soft for Lea. The old French Cheri from the late 40's was wonderful. Do you know how to get it?

Yes I do agree with the casting... Rupert is too ugly? Do you have eyes?

"No Luis, it's not me, you're mistaken."