Colette
Short description
Colette is a biographical drama about the French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who marries the established Parisian author Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy, and moves from the countryside to the city. He brings her into literary and artistic circles and then persuades her to write for him under his own name. The result is a semi-autobiographical novel about a bold country girl named Claudine, which becomes a success; further Claudine books follow and make Willy famous, while Colette remains publicly unrecognised. The growing imbalance in their marriage, and her wish to be acknowledged as the true author, drive her to challenge the role she has been given.
Wash Westmoreland directed the film, his third feature and the one that followed Still Alice; he wrote the screenplay with Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, and Christine Vachon, Stephen Woolley and Pamela Koffler produced. Keira Knightley plays Colette, with Dominic West as Willy, Denise Gough as Missy, Fiona Shaw as Sido and Eleanor Tomlinson as Georgie Raoul-Duval. It runs 112 minutes and took about 14 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 6.7/10 from roughly 28,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.9/10 from about 962 votes. Critics were somewhat warmer, rating it 7.2/10 across 225 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- For the role of Colette, the director and screenwriter Wash Westmoreland had planned from the beginning to cast Keira Knightley, and an agreement was reached when he met her via video link at the moment he received an invitation to the Shanghai International Film Festival. It was midnight, Westmoreland's phone battery was running low, but during a few minutes of conversation, he persuaded the actress to accept the role, after which the battery finally died.
- During location shooting in Budapest, it was so hot that Dominic West (who played Willie) wore a special watersports vest under his heavy costume. It worked like a car radiator, evenly distributing water across the upper body, and thus cooling the body. West was recommended this method by John C. Reilly, who played Oliver Hardy in the John S. Baird biopic 'Stan & Ollie' (2018).
- Wash Westmoreland wrote the script for this biographical drama back in 2001, but work on the project had to be postponed at that time.
- During the historical period in which the film is set (late 19th – early 20th centuries), women in France were prohibited from wearing men's clothing. This explains the scandal caused by the protagonist's decision to start wearing trousers.
- The film "Colette" owes its existence to Richard Glatzer, a screenwriter and friend of Wash Westmoreland, who became genuinely interested in the French writer Colette and her life. In 1999, Glatzer read several books about Colette and began to consider adapting her story for the screen. When Westmoreland and Glatzer found themselves in the public eye – this happened when their 2014 drama "Still Alice," which they also wrote, starring Julianne Moore, won an Oscar for Best Actress – they decided to finally start working on "Colette." Unfortunately, Glatzer fell ill with late-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – a neurological disease that affects nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary movements – and soon passed away.
- Filming on city streets took place in Paris, while scenes of the French countryside were shot in the counties of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. Due to a lack of budget to film the entire movie in Paris, filmmakers were also forced to shoot on the streets of Budapest and in the Origo studios soundstages.
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