COLONEL CHARBET
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1995 Raymond Johnston
Directed by Yves Angelo
Starring Gerard Depardieu, Fanny Ardant, Fabrice Luchini,
Andre Dussollier
>From the novel by Honore de Balzac
While the free-wheeling spirit of the French New Wave may be all but gone, except for a few festival circuit oddities, the tide of high-brow revisionist costume dramas keeps getting stronger. Following close on the heels of QUEEN MARGOT, a Dumas novel adaptation, comes COLONEL CHARBET. This latest film is adapted with remarkable subtlety from a novel by Honore de Balzac. Balzac is one of those authors that one always means to read sometime, but never quite gets the book all the way from the shelf to the cashier's counter. This impressive film might change that. It is one of those films that makes you want to read the book to find out more of the elusive details of the strange story.
COLONEL CHARBET is somewhat of a similar story to THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE. A soldier, after a long time, returns home to find his wife remarried, and his money, well, tied up. The setting for the story this time is the Empire period, 1817 to be exact. The Colonel is played by MARTIN GUERRE'S Depardieu. Early in the film, Gerard Depardieu has a long monologue. He explains his situation to a busy lawyer. Eventually they trade stories on the depths to which they have seen humanity sink. The story calls for flashbacks but few are given, brief glinpses of a long ago battle. Depardieu manages to hold our interest merely by talking in a static shot. His low-key, seemingly effortless approach to the complex character of Colonel Charbet is one of the things that sells the film.
With all the expensive trappings and elaborate Empire era costumes the film runs the risk of becoming a bloated Masterpiece Theatre episode. The screenplay downplays the pageantry and even the battle scenes. Universal themes of ambition, greed, happiness and justice come the forefront. Without being cardboard cutouts, various characters come to stand for certain ideals; the lawyer being interested in justice most obviously. It is small moments, little gestures and expressions that make them real. The way the lawyer reads his mail while listening, Countess Ferraud's (Fanny Ardant) ploy with her necklace, Colonel Charbet's expression when he looks at his wife's fraudulent tax statements, all of these things make the dusty literary characters into real people. Injecting otherwise dusty storylines with a note of realism is one of the Balzac is noted for. Director Yves Angelo, along with additional screenwriters, managed to capture that sense of realism. Too often the subtle elements of a costume drama are lost in the translation.
In terms of visual style, realism abounds as well. The candle-lit night scenes are dim and yellowed. The streets seem to be always recovering from a recent mudstorm. The handsome, and for women often bizarre, costumes don't look like permanent press polyester. The household servants look like the underfed and poorly educated people that they probably would have been. The hard edged Colonel Charbet, (Depardieu), looks awkward and uncomfortable the few times that he has to wear his dandyish suit. His lawyer on the other hand looks as if he was born to inhabit such flamboyant attire. The Countess, (Ardant) has an elaborate array of Empire era hair accessories and doo-dads in her room, she at least seems to know where they all go and what they are used for.
Ardant has a difficult role in the Countess. She is both a victim of circumstance and a victimizer. Her role could easily fall into another spider-woman portrayal of the greedy and cold blooded woman so often found in period literature. Ardant manages to keep the Countess a sympathetic figure, even as she tries to use her children as pawns and tries to deceive her husband, Count Ferraud (Andre Dussollier).
There is a lot of history in the film, but it is a fairly painless lesson in post-Napoleonic events. COLONEL CHARBET is an easily enjoyable and easily understandable film. The writing, acting, directing and production design is all first rate for a period costume drama.
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