<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><h2>The flipside of his 2006 'The Singer,' in which a musical talent is
forgotten by his public, Xavier Giannoli's exquisite satire thrusts an
amateur soprano onto the stage.</h2>
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<p><strong>Cover your ears and open your hearts: In French director <a href="http://variety.com/t/xavier-giannoli/" id="auto-tag_xavier-giannoli">Xavier Giannoli</a>’s pitch-perfect comedy of manners, “<a href="http://variety.com/t/marguerite/" id="auto-tag_marguerite">Marguerite</a>,”
a shameless chanteuse with a surplus of money and a shortage of talent
buys her way into the spotlight, exposing the hypocrisy of her unctuous
social circle in the process. Inspired by screechy American soprano <a href="http://variety.com/t/florence-foster-jenkins/" id="auto-tag_florence-foster-jenkins">Florence Foster Jenkins</a>
— the selfsame warbler soon to be embodied by Meryl Streep in a
forthcoming Stephen Frears biopic — this splendid satire benefits not
only from being the first to reach the screen, but also from “The
Singer” director Giannoli’s gift for striking just the right tone with
such tricky material.</strong></p>
<p>Time will tell what approach Frears’ version will take, though this competing project, starring Cesar-winning French chameleon <a href="http://variety.com/t/catherine-frot/" id="auto-tag_catherine-frot">Catherine Frot</a>
(whose awards record ain’t so shabby next to Streep’s), presents the
ridiculous baroness in such a way that we laugh at her strangled
ululations, but not the fragile soul responsible. In another director’s
hands, Marguerite Dumont — whose fictitious moniker sounds an awful lot
like the Marx Brothers’ matriarchal foil — might have been easily
reduced to the butt of a cruel joke, as Jenkins was in several stage
plays, including “Souvenir” and “Glorious!” But Giannoli approaches
Marguerite with sympathy, casting Frot for her ability to bring out the
character’s human side.</p>
<p>In the decades since her death (tellingly, one month after a
career-ending 1944 concert at Carnegie Hall), Marguerite’s real-life
model hasn’t been so fortunate: Jenkins’ notoriously horrendous voice
lives on today in the form of novelty records, and one need only search
her name on YouTube to hear the tone-deaf soprano mauling Mozart’s
“Queen of the Night” — an impossibly difficult aria that demands a
properly trained coloratura to navigate its tricky arpeggio minefield
and capture that high-F flag. Naturally, this is the same song
Marguerite selects to perform in the film’s opening number.</p>
<p>Giannoli sets the scene by following the arrival of a nervous young
music student at the Dumont estate (mousily played by Christa Theret,
whose subplot barely survives a film that’s arguably overlong as-is).
The unsuspecting girl has been hired to sing a duet at a benefit for war
orphans hosted by Marguerite herself, where this enigmatic aristocratic
(who fussily prepares herself upstairs and offcamera) will be the main
attraction. Meanwhile, determined to hear her voice for themselves, two
young men — one a journalist (Sylvain Dieuaide), the other a self-styled
anarchist (Aubert Fenoy) — scale the wall and sneak into the recital.</p>
<p>Like Jenkins, Marguerite restricts her concerts to a
by-invitation-only audience of sycophantic acquaintances, who offer
nothing but compliments to her face, while whispering insults behind her
back. As the anticipation mounts, her husband (Andre Marcon) invents an
excuse not to attend by faking the breakdown of his gorgeous
Sima-Standard automobile, clearly determined to avoid the embarrassment
— a view counterbalanced by Marguerite’s over-protective butler,
Madelbos (Denis Mpunga), who personally encourages her fantasy, even
going so far as to photograph his employer in campy secondhand opera
costumes.</p>
<p>And so, with all ears on her, Marguerite descends, the music starts …
and the manor’s chandeliers tremble in fear of her crystal-shattering
trills. While the theater audience can’t help but chuckle, the assembled
guests are held prisoner by her caterwauling — players in a sort of
modern-day “Emperor’s New Clothes,” wherein no one has the courage to
tell Marguerite the truth. That dynamic grows even more heightened later
when Madelbos blackmails an insolvent opera star (played as a
limelight-loving fop by Michel Fau, who milks the role for maximum
drama) into giving her voice lessons.</p>
<p>The day after her war-orphan debacle, Marguerite is overwhelmed by a
double-edged “rave” in the party-crashing reporter’s paper and a parlor
full of white flowers from her “admirers.” (Like the elegant lady that
she is, Marguerite favors all things alabaster, giving the film its
tony, almost-monochrome aesthetic.) She opts to take these tokens at
face value, though Giannoli deliciously implies that they are not what
they seem: Madelbos discreetly clips the crueler reviews from the Paris
broadsheets so Marguerite won’t see them, exchanging knowing looks with
the baron that suggest he was the one to have ordered the flowers.</p>
<p>While “Marguerite” is first and foremost the fable of a woman so
smitten with music (and later, by the thrill of an audience) that she
feels compelled to practice it well beyond the all-too-evident limits of
her own ability, Giannoli’s script encompasses multiple love stories in
one. Less cynical than “Superstar,” but not quite as sensitive as “The
Singer” (his underseen 2006 romance, in which a talented musician is
reduced to working as a lounge singer), the film also explores the
marital dynamic between Marguerite and her opportunistic husband, who
tells his mistress that “she bought my title, not me,” but gradually
comes to redeem himself.</p>
<p>More moving still is the way Madelbos treats Marguerite, cueing the
audience as to how they should view her as well: with empathy and
patience. Though he occasionally fades into the woodwork (or else stands
out a bit too prominently, as in one jarring sex scene), Madelbos
quietly enables — one might even say “orchestrates” — Marguerite’s
fantasy. Congolese actor Mpunga plays the subtext as needed,
underscoring the film’s exquisite class commentary in the process. Just
as last year’s “Foxcatcher” dared to expose the ugliness of America’s
oligarchical tendencies, “Marguerite” skewers France’s two-faced upper
crust, where sincerity seems a foreign concept and money can buy neither
taste nor talent.</p>
<p>Jenkins, who was rendered partly deaf by syphilis, dismissed the
haters who dared to criticize her singing, whereas Marguerite is too
naive to even realize she’s awful — leading to a rather awkward “they’re
all gonna laugh at you” montage in the film’s finale. At her
faux-friends’ urging, Marguerite takes to the stage wearing a pair of
feathered wings. Like nearly every detail that might seem “too much,”
this costume hails from Jenkins’ life. If anything, it’s in the
emotionally sincere bits that Giannoli has allowed himself a certain
amount of dramatic license.</p>
<p>The helmer, who has been featured twice in competition at Cannes, is a
maestro when it comes to the classical aspects of the medium, employing
production design, costumes and props to their utmost potential, while
heightening our involvement through strategic use of music and
mise-en-scene. If Marguerite’s climactic public concert feels bathetic
— the ugly duckling to “Black Swan’s” all-or-nothing curtain call —
that’s only because her folly doesn’t end there. It’s the poetic
epilogue that follows in which Marguerite’s fate shall be decided, while
we are left to interpret whether her acoustic hubris ultimately
destroyed her life or saved her marriage.</p>
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<div id="variety-review-credits" class=""><h2>Venice Film Review: 'Marguerite'</h2><div id="variety-review-origin">Reviewed
at Club de l'Etoile, Paris, Aug. 20, 2015. (In Venice Film Festival —
competing; Telluride Film Festival.) Running time: <strong>129 MIN.</strong></div>
<h3>Production</h3><div id="variety-primary-credit">(France-Czech
Republic-Belgium) A Memento Films (in France)/Cohen Media Group (in
U.S.) release of a Fidelite presentation of a Gabriel, France 3 Cinema,
Sirena Films, Scope Pictures, Jouror Cinema, CN5 Prods. production, in
association with Memento Films Distribution, with the participation of
Canal Plus, Cine Plus, France Televisions, in association with Cofinova
11, La Banque Postale 8, Manon 5, with the participation of CNC, with
the support of Eurimates. (International sales: Memento Films Intl.,
Paris.) Produced by Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier. Executive
producers, Christine De Jekel, Artemio Benki.</div>
<h3>Crew</h3><div>Directed by Xavier Giannoli. Screenplay, Giannoli,
Marcia Romano. Camera (color, widescreen), Glynn Speeckaert; editor,
Cyril Nakache; music, Ronan Maillard; production designer, Martin Kurel;
art director, Pavel Tatar; set decorator, Veronique Melery; costume
designer, Pierre-Jean Larroque; sound, Francois Musy; re-recording
mixer, Gabriel Hafner; line producer, Philippe Hagege; assistant
directors, Tomas Pavlacky, Mirek Lux; casting, Michael Laguens, Arwa
Salmanova.</div>
<h3>With</h3>
<div id="variety-primary-cast">Catherine Frot, Andre Marcon, Michel Fau,
Christa Theret, Denis Mpunga, Sylvain Dieuaide, Aubert Fenoy, Sophia
Leboutte, Theo Cholbi. (French dialogue)<br><br><a href="http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/marguerite-venice-telluride-film-review-1201581323/">http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/marguerite-venice-telluride-film-review-1201581323/</a><br><br><a href="https://goo.gl/ZuXjzE">https://goo.gl/ZuXjzE</a><br><br><a href="https://goo.gl/DAWCid">https://goo.gl/DAWCid</a><br></div>
</div></div><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)<br>professor de musicologia ufmg<br>professor colaborador ppgm-unirio<br><a href="http://www.proibidao.org" target="_blank">www.proibidao.org</a><br><a href="http://goo.gl/KMV98I" target="_blank">ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini</a><br></div><div><a href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2" target="_blank">www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2</a><br><a href="http://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ" target="_blank">scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ</a><br></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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