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Cheri: (Alexandre Desplat) After a 1990's
saturation of the market involving films dealing with societal mores and
loves affairs in Europe of a hundred years ago, the industry rarely
revisits this costume and art director's realm of mastery. One exception
is the 2009 European film
Cheri, a throwback to Merchant-Ivory
productions and Jane Austen adaptations, courtesy of veteran genre
screenwriter Christopher Hampton and director Stephen Frears. The story
of
Cheri is one that predictably follows the love affair between
one of Paris' most powerful courtesans and the much younger son of
another. Their casual encounters turn into several years of a deeper
relationship that is eventually threatened upon the younger man's
arranged marriage to a woman more appropriate for him. A restraint of
emphasis on the moral implications of the affair and a handful of laughs
keep the picture light-hearted, though there is no escaping the
inevitable circumstances of love lost by the tale's end. Critical
response has been overwhelmingly positive for Michelle Pfeiffer and
Kathy Bates as the two aging courtesans, but little praise has been
saved for the younger cast members, leaving
Cheri with
respectable, but not overwhelmingly positive reviews. Extending his
services in a genre not unfamiliar to his career is composer Alexandre
Desplat, whose international recognition has been slowly but steadily
gaining steam over the course of the decade. Any period romance film
could suffice with a basic score of pretty, harmonic tones; undoubtedly,
a straight forward approach to something like
Cheri from
composers similar to John Barry or Rachel Portman would have served the
film well enough. With Desplat, however, comes a sense of complication
that is all his own, a need to intelligently fill the aural environment
of a film with more lines of musical thought than necessary. This
approach is a significant attraction for some listeners, though its
tendency to shun straight forward harmonic expressions of majesty either
repulses or generates indifference from others. In these regards,
Cheri is a score that true collectors of Desplat's work will
appreciate greatly while others will likely find it merely average. The
fact that this division in appeal has come to define much of Desplat's
career is an interesting debate for another time.
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For veteran film music listeners still waiting for a
replacement for the undeniably romantic inclinations of Georges Delerue,
Philippe Rombi remains perhaps a better candidate than Desplat, if only
for the exact reason detailed above. Desplat has the capability, as he
does in
Cheri, to perfectly capture the spirit and character of a
love affair. But his path to achieving that functionality takes him in
directions that don't offer streamlined, expansive expressions of
passion or melancholy. He often allows several incongruent lines of
musical action to coincide, not always forming satisfying counterpoint
but allowing the dominant lines to carry enough of a cue's personality
to address the proper overarching emotion. These periods of frenetic,
almost prickly enticement in
Cheri are easily its highlights,
using piano, strings, high singular woodwinds, a variety of tingling
percussion, and even electric organ to move with alacrity through
figures that dance off the pages of Desplat's written notes (the absence
of a harpsichord at the forefront is a relief). The sense of whimsy in
this treble-dominated score floats effortlessly despite all of this
action in its major thematic parts. Conversely, however, the score does
falter in the second half of its presentation on album, during which
time Desplat's far more restrained and surprisingly sparse material is
heard. The score becomes strained in this half of the product, ending in
the concluding track on an extremely discomforting, single extended
whine at the highest reaches of the violins. The score's more
interesting cues, and those that will perhaps appeal to a greater
audience, will be those in which Desplat involves both brass and a
deeper bass region, including "Return Home" and "To Biarritz." Both of
these cues close with fluid expressions of harmony, especially the
latter one (which also contains an odd semblance to Elliot Goldenthal's
noir thematic adaptations in
Batman Forever). Overall,
Cheri is the kind of work that will enthrall collectors of
Desplat's airy but precise rhythmic meanderings. The advertised
participation of the London Symphony Orchestra perhaps ensures that an
adequate rendering of these difficult lines of movement will be well
performed, but don't assume that the ensemble usage guarantees any sense
of resounding depth. The album may have been a more consistently
engaging listening experience at 30 minutes rather than 45, and a
curious 15-second insertion of silence in the middle of "The Wedding" is
disconcerting. Still, it's an effective score and an attractive album
for a specific group of listeners.
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| Bias Check: | For Alexandre Desplat reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.21 (in 19 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.1
(in 10,771 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
