Students of Molière will recognise allusions to scenes and characters from the 17th-century French playwright's work in the main body of Laurent Tirard's flouncy biopic.
Students of respectable middlebrow cinema will detect stale whiffs of Shakespeare in Love about the entire enterprise. Once again, we follow the young writer as, granted maturity during a troubled love affair, he discovers the strength to achieve proper greatness.
Coming in the wake of Becoming Jane, Molière confirms the establishment of a new genre: The Scribe Begins. Still, Tirard's picture, though unoriginal, remains a well acted, elegantly staged exercise in heritage cinema.
Romain Duris, this generation's Jean-Paul Belmondo, exudes charisma in the leading role, and the pace of the farcical drama never slackens. The film is never exactly gripping, you understand, but it always gives the impression it is doing you good.
The story begins with an older Molière, already established as a farceur of genius, electing to embark on his first tragedy. After visiting the house of a mysterious dying woman, he changes his mind and decides to deliver more comedy to his eager public.
We then flashback a decade or so to discover the callow Molière, a destitute actor, being hired by Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), a wealthy buffoon, to advise him how to best present his own, awful one-act play to the girl he loves. In the course of the tutelage, Molière falls for Jourdain's wife (Laura Morante) and observes signposts towards his own true vocation.
Even if the writers had not allowed Molière to call himself Monsieur Tartuffe in the household, it would surely be apparent that the odd plot was being moulded to some unseen template. The commitment to consistently reference scenes from Molière's plays does, eventually, lead the action down one too many unwelcome cul-de-sacs. Also, Duris is, perhaps, a little too glum to carry off the lighter comic moments.
But, as animated chocolate boxes go, Molière will do well enough.
