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Premiere of Cycling with Molière
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At the height of his career as an actor, Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini) decides to retire from the limelight and goes to live in solitude on the Île de Ré. Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson), a fellow actor whose TV career is flying high, is planning a production of Molière's play The Misanthrope. So, he visits Serge to offer him a main role at the play. Serge, who feels contempt for the world of actors, has doubts about accepting the role but, given his admiration for Moliere, he finally agrees to try some fragments of the first act. Gradually, they will go into the world of Molière in more depth, and in this process the two actors will measure, challenge, seduce, humiliate and reconcile with each other. Thus, we are witnesses to the process of building the play and progressing with the text. Both actors face the work with passion, showing their difficulties, their techniques, their efforts to memorize, and paying attention to the meaning of each word.
The text of Molière is used to make us think about the acting profession. But at the same time Alceste and Filinto, the characters in The Misanthrope, are more like Serge and Gauthier than they recognize. Alceste is Tanneur, who leads a very isolated life on the island, just painting and despising human clumsiness and stupidity. Filinto, an optimistic and forgiving man, fits in with anything just to get recognition and success. He thinks that a deep mind can only move forward if masked, a precept Serge rejects. Gradually, on the island, Gauthier will discover that he also has a lot of Alceste.
The director Philippe Le Guay successfully gets these characters move to the present world. These two actors actually are who give significance to this smart, funny and lucid movie.
For our ears, it is really enjoyable to listen to them declaiming Molière, who is actually the main protagonist. At some point, however, some expendable subplots overshadow the story.
Texts: Núria Farré. facebook@cinemaperaestudiants.cat
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