Cougar Porn for the Corset Set - A DVD Review of Cheri

Coming to DVD tomorrow, Michelle Pfeiffer stars in Cheri, a romantic period piece which amounts to Cougar Porn for the Romance Novel Fetishist in us all. In full disclosure, as a 31-year-old male, Fabio doesn’t grace the cover of any novel in my apartment- which may be one of the reasons I was disappointed and bored at times with this effort from veteran director Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons).

The premise, based on a 1920 French novel, is fairly solid. Pfeiffer stars as the aging courtesan Lea de Lonval, basically the Paris Hilton of her day. Having pilfered her way to a life of opulence, France’s most famous seductress is about to retire her bed for good when her former rival Madam Peloux (Kathy Bates) asks Lea to tutor her rudderless son Cheri (Rupert Friend) on love and life.

With nothing else cooking, Lea invites Cheri to her summer mansion for a week of relaxation and ‘therapy,’ only to find the little bugger’s still hanging around six years later. Madam Peloux is more than a tad upset that her baby Cheri is now part of a scandalous winter-spring relationship, so she sets Cheri up for marriage to Edmee, the young daughter of another famous courtesan. Yes, apparently the tabloids must have had a jolly good time in pre-World War I France.

At first, Lea plays the breakup as cool as the female Fonze (complete with leather corset instead of leather jacket). Lea’s cool. Calm. Collected. After all, she’s bagged 1,001 men already, so what if she lost her little play thing? But a funny thing happens once Cheri’s gone- Lea realizes she hurts more than she’s ever hurt in her life. Somehow Cheri had made this lady of the night feel feel love for the first time.

Unsure of what to make of this newfound heartbreak, Lea tries to find comfort in the arms of a younger man. Meanwhile, Cheri attempts to reconcile the lack of passion he feels toward his new wife, as their love-making is put to shame by the retirement-home sexcapades he shared with Lea. The final act finds Cheri and Lea in a game of cat and mouse, as they crescendo towards rekindling the love they each feel for one another over those six scandalous years.

Of course, the main problem with the film is that those six lustful seasons of love amount to, literally, 60 seconds of film time. So, rather than seeing how this winter-spring relationship germinates, we’re told by narration that these lovers grew into the French Harold and Maude. It forms a shaky base for a feature-length film, and the audience is never truly invested in the destiny and fate of these two lovers. Instead, what's left can best be classified as perhaps the first installment of Cougar Porn- or wish fulfillment for aging women who want young studs to fawn over them for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Outside of obvious script issues; however, the film is solid in many ways. The production and costume design highlight a meticulous effort by Frears, while the score by Alexandre Desplat (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is one of the year’s better efforts.

As one would expect, the biggest draw here is definitely Pfeiffer- who could score a Best Actress nod if the chips fall her way. In a role ripe with parallels to her own life as an aging actress, Pfeiffer does a brilliant job with the complex emotions Lea faces regarding her mortality and fading beauty. In fact, it’s hard to watch Cheri without thinking how sad it will be for us all when the 51-year-old icon (which equates to 1,001 in starlet years) is set out to pasture in the hills of Hollywood. But, with this effort, Pfeiffer shows Hollywood that just because your looks may be dim slightly, there’s no reason to retire your bed.

In terms of DVD bonus material, this effort is rather dry. There’s a few deleted scenes and a Making of featurette.