Chéri | Recreating the Period
One of the most generous directors when it comes to collaborating with his creative heads of department, Stephen Frears insists he relies entirely on his cinematographer and production and costume designers for how the film will look. Those who worked with him, however, know just how crucial his input was in the making of CHÉRI. Says composer Alexandre Desplat: “He says he knows nothing about the music or the design? He’s lying! Stephen has a great intuition of what the movie is aiming for and he knows exactly what will work when they’re put together. With the music, for example, he doesn’t ask me to change this chord or that note, but he says make it nastier or wilder or give it more wit. And he’s very involved.”
CHÉRI marks award-winning cinematographer Darius Khondji’s first collaboration with Frears. “Stephen is a very visual director,” says Khondji. “He has a feel of what’s right and wrong for the mood but unlike other directors he doesn’t talk about angles and camera positions. With Stephen what comes across much more clearly is the mood that the film should take.”
“We talked about the period, the mood, the atmosphere, the look,” he continues. “Our discussions embraced the work of Max Ophuls, Jean Renoir and Bertolucci’s The Conformist even though not same period as well as impressionist paintings. Colette is, after all, an impressionist writer in a way. But I never try to mimic paintings, there just has to be a subliminal reference to art, it has to haunt the mood.”
The setting of the film – 1906 when Europe was on the brink of moving into modernity – also informed Khondki’s approach. “Madame Peloux is stuck in the past whereas Léa looks forward and this contrast between their characters inspired the lighting. At Léa’s house, the camera is luminous, light and mobile, and free. But when we go to Madame Peloux’s home which is dark and oppressive and crammed with expensive but vulgar objects, the camera is static and heavy.”
Working on the film brought some surprising rewards for the cinematographer. “I didn’t know I loved shooting in Paris!” says Khondji. “Maybe it was the period setting, maybe it was Stephen’s approach, but this film was much more exciting to be involved with than others I’ve worked on.”
Alan MacDonald, who worked with Frears on The Queen, was brought on board as production designer. He plunged himself into researching the period around 1906 when the film is set and it was this that provided inspiration for the contrasting looks of Léa’s and Madame Peloux’s worlds.
“I realised that we were dealing with a time of innovation,” says MacDonald. “We think of ourself as innovators, but 100 years ago society was going through seismic changes with the proliferation of train travel, electricity, photography, cars and the telephone to name just a few innovations of the era. Madame Peloux was living through this but I saw her as living in the past, she knows what suited her and she would stay with it for ever. Léa understands the changes sweeping through society.”
Using photography as his reference for Léa’s home and impressionists, post-impressionists and symbolist painting as his reference for Madame Peloux’s house, MacDonald created the two contrasting looks of the film. Where the acquisitive Madame Peloux’s house is stuffed full of opulent, mismatched furniture and gawdy bricolage and objects d’art from the 19th century and before, Léa’s airy, elegant house reflects her exquisite taste for modern art and design.
The interior of Madame Peloux’s house, which was filmed at a chateau 20 km outside Paris, is crammed with items sourced from Parisian antique shops and props houses including stuffed birds and animal heads, velvet drapes, animal skins, gilded candelabras and vases, heavily ornate clocks and timepieces, marble tables, embroidered carpets and blankets and heavy crystal decanters. Everything smacks of someone with too much money and too little taste.
“There’s also a portrait of Madame Peloux as younger woman,” says MacDonald, “and it shows what a great beauty she was but it’s now a shrine to her youth and a reminder to the audience of the power her beauty represented.”
Léa’s home could not be more different. MacDonald and his team were fortunate to have as their main location the villa designed and owned by Hector Guimard, the architect who designed the iconic art nouveau entrances to the stations of the Paris Metro.
“Léa has moved with the times,” explains MacDonald, “she has embraced the modernity of art nouveau. Where Madame Peloux’s house looks enormous from outside but has tiny rooms, Léa’s has a more open-plan, fluid feel with large, spacious rooms. Maison Guimard was one of first houses with central heating, so there are no fireplaces which allowed architects to open up rooms and allows light to lead from one room to the next through french doors.”
The design of the room reflects Léa’s love of modernity. Rather than paintings adorning the walls, MacDonald used wall paper – reproduced from original contemporary designs and in calming pastel colours of lilacs, greys and blues – and the occasional understated wall decoration. Because Léa has been freed from the constraints of the tight corset and bustle, the furniture is more relaxed with simple shapes and elegant lines. MacDonald also used plants and flowers to decorate the interiors, reflecting a contrast with the dead animals in Madame Peloux’s mansion.
Léa’s boudoir, where so much of the film is set, was recreated at the MMC Coloneum Studios in Germany, where MacDonald designed the beautiful art nouveau bed.
Locations also included the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, where Léa escapes, and in Paris the Hotel Regina, Saint Etienne du Mont, the church where Chéri and Edmée get married, and the legendary Maxim’s restaurant which doubled for the Restaurant Dragon Bleu, where Chéri spends his evenings with his best friend Vicomte Desmond.
Costume Designer Consolata Boyle also took her cue from the contrast between the two female protagonists of the film. “There’s a simplicity to Léa’s look,” says the designer, “and the cool, empty space of her home shows her confidence. She’s a woman of wonderful taste and not encumbered by things. She has it all but doesn’t have to flaunt it. Peloux, meanwhile, sees things as a sign of her success and status. ”
Inspired by her research into impressionist painting, Boyle designed all the costumes for the main characters. While Madame Peloux’s gowns are heavy, dark and richly embroidered and she wears big, showy hats, Léa’s style is unfussy and cooler and shows off the clarity and beauty of her silhouette.
Boyle worked closed with hair and make-up designer Daniel Phillips whose research underlined the fashion for hats during the period. The soft hairstyles of the period were exaggerated for Madame Peloux while he went for a prettier, more subdued style for Léa inspired by the paintings of Gustav Klimt.
For the elusive Chéri, meanwhile, Boyle took her inspiration not only from his physical beauty but from the world of ballet, music, theatre and culture that Léa introduces him to. “The type of young man in Paris at that time had an obsession with clothes, with finishing and fabrics, and they were very sophisticated. In essence, he’s a dandy.”
The final element of the film was provided by composer Alexandre Desplat, whose score for The Queen won him an Academy Award for Best Music. Taking his inspiration from the music of the early 20th century in France – a fruitful period which saw the rise of Saint-Saëns, Debussy and Ravel - as well as the Orientalism and mysticism that was informing art and culture at the time, Desplat created a score that combines the refinement of French composition with the exoticism of Chinese violins.
“The best score brings out the emotions that aren’t obvious on the screen,” explains Desplat. “The character of Chéri is melancholic, sensitive and closed off and he doesn’t know about life, he goes with the flow and is not very active except sexually, of course. The music has to bring out the sensuality to the film – after all, it’s about a boy of 19 who knows little but has considerable sexual power and a woman in her 40s who’s an expert in sexual matters.
“It’s an intimate film too,” he continues, “so the orchestra can’t be too intrusive. I used a small orchestra of 50-70 musicians and half the score is just strings and I brought in a string trio with the viola as lead playing on a higher register which gives it a darker sound.”
It was not just the screenplay that inspired Desplat. He was moved by the interplay between the film’s two leads. “Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend have a very strong chemistry,” he says, “and I wouldn’t have been able to write the score without the subtlety and emotion of their acting.”
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