HEARTWARMING "CYCLING WITH MOLIERE"

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

Bicycles are the main transportation in this film about art and life imitating each other.

The French film “Cycling With Moliere,” with its noon Friday screening, opens the first full day of the fourth annual Loft Film Fest. Charming, whimsical, thoughtful and poignant (it is French, after all), this is a perfect choice for expressing the spirit of the fest.

Directed by Philippe Le Guay, from an idea developed by Fabrice Luchini and Le Guay, the film playfully explores the complicated egos of two actors who have been bristly friends for years.

Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini) is an intense classical actor who suffered a nervous breakdown three years ago and has exiled himself into a creaky country house to live mostly in silence on a rain-swept coastal island.

Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson) of equally imposing talent, it is suggested, has sold out to the television broadcasters and finds himself the reluctant star of a very popular weekly TV show about a macho doctor who roams the world saving lives – usually by completing a difficult operation under extremely challenging conditions.

To set the wheels in motion, urbane Valence leaves his Paris home to convince Tanneur to appear in a stage production of  Moliere’s “The Misanthrope.” Determined to stay remote, Tanneur says “No.”

Equally determined, Valence says “Lets rehearse lines for a week, just to see, and then you can decide.”

As the two rehearse various scenes from “The Misanthrope” their own emotions come bubbling up from both past experiences and the play itself. Following along, we ride the roller coaster of their tangled relationship and also come to appreciate the depth of the actors who play these roles.

A lot of the fun comes in watching the power shifts back and forth between one and the other, as both jockey for the advantage in their day-to-day lives. When another island resident, an Italian divorcee (Maya Sansa) becomes an unexpected love interest – all the intellectual jousting becomes much more personal.

You needn’t be a Francophile or even a student of Moliere to appreciate the humor here. Tanneur is the great actor whose fragile personality forced him to retire from the stage. Valence is the great actor who compromised his aesthetic values.

Is one more unfortunate than the other? That question is evaluated, too.