[ANPPOM-Lista] entre o verdadeiro e o falso: marguerite

Seg Maio 23 13:36:06 BRT 2016

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.

*Cover your ears and open your hearts: In French director Xavier Giannoli
<http://variety.com/t/xavier-giannoli/>’s pitch-perfect comedy of manners,
“Marguerite <http://variety.com/t/marguerite/>,” 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 Florence Foster Jenkins
<http://variety.com/t/florence-foster-jenkins/> — 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.*

Time will tell what approach Frears’ version will take, though this
competing project, starring Cesar-winning French chameleon Catherine Frot
<http://variety.com/t/catherine-frot/> (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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
Venice Film Review: 'Marguerite'
Reviewed at Club de l'Etoile, Paris, Aug. 20, 2015. (In Venice Film
Festival — competing; Telluride Film Festival.) Running time: *129 MIN.*
Production
(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.
Crew
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.
With
Catherine Frot, Andre Marcon, Michel Fau, Christa Theret, Denis Mpunga,
Sylvain Dieuaide, Aubert Fenoy, Sophia Leboutte, Theo Cholbi. (French
dialogue)

http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/marguerite-venice-telluride-film-review-1201581323/

https://goo.gl/ZuXjzE

https://goo.gl/DAWCid

-- 
carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)
professor de musicologia ufmg
professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
www.proibidao.org
ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
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