Whatever her age, she looks too young and too hot. Lea is a mother/lover figure to Cheri, and should look like a mature woman of the era with an hourglass figure. She wears pearls around her neck so the waddle doesn't show. When she cuts her hair after the affair is done (but not in Cheri's mind, unfortunately for him) she chops her hair short, ignores the pampered beauty treatment and suddenly looks like an old woman. No way is Pheiffer willing to portray this.

"She wears pearls around her neck so the waddle doesn't show": nice line.

The only thing that matters is that a fish be cooked all the way through, which is how you get a "Chéri" with all the Frenchness boiled out of it. Mon Dieu, that is perfectly right. That is exactly how the English do French!

Can we talk about Dangerous Liaisons? Valmont, by Milos Forman, was a superior film, probably because of the casting.

Glenn Close's Marquise is viper-like but without the required charm; Annette Bening is dangerous precisely because of her charm. Uma Thurman's young Cecile is gawky and stupid but not sweet- it's impossible to care about the fate of her character. Fairuza Balk is infinitely more appealing. John Malkovich's Valmont is so dissolute that its impossible to really believe he is falling in love with the Michelle Pfeiffer character. Colin Firth's Valmont is a rake, but not a pervert. Let's hope someone re-re-makes Cheri - maybe there's a good film in there.

I've read "Cheri" and "End of Cheri" often, and it sounds like the movie doesn't get it--i. e., Colette's story.

Colette's Cheri is enraptured by Lea, a bountifully gorgeous woman who introduces him to being an adult man and a lover. In the second book, he's married the young woman he's supposed to, but yearns for Lea. He goes to see her and discovers she's become really fat, and jolly with her "pal" (the Kathy Bates character, I assume). Lea at 49 is perfectly contented with being past the trials of courtesan life--but Cheri can't stand the loss of the Lea he loved and desired.

Lea should be played by someone bountifully gorgeous and curvy, and I don't know if there are major actresses today with that physique. She should be like Sophia Loren in her heyday, maybe, or Liv Ullmann. Bountiful and overflowing, not skinny. I plan to see the movie, but it doesn't sound like the filmmakers got it.

Thank you Fiona for alerting us to the plot points that occur in "The Last of Cheri," rather than "Cheri". Also, "waddle" is a verb. A "wattle" is a noun that could be covered by a pearl choker. Imagine if Madame Jones from the 7th grade were to catch that error before you did. One half letter grade at very least!

Thanks. That really is the situation in the book. In the first scene, she does her best to get her pearls back from Cheri (who's wearing them) not only because of their value and his carelessness, but because she doesn't want him to see her neck exposed—which would partially expose her true age, and she fears, make herself less desirable to him.

I take real issue with this synopsis by Zacharek:

Léa doesn't intend to build a relationship with Chéri; she takes him on as a diversion, a fling. But after six years, she gets used to having him around, and she's dismayed when she learns that his mother has decided to marry him off to Edmee (Felicity Jones), the pretty young daughter of another one of their old-time colleagues, Marie-Laure (played by Iben Hjelje). Léa can't, of course, express that dismay openly: As a professional, she's built a reputation as a fabulous lover who's also cool about love. But the loss of Chéri forces her to reckon with her own loneliness -- and with the fact that she's getting older, if no less beautiful, by the day.

I don’t know if this is supposed to represent the depiction in the movie (where it may indeed be the case). But it is not an accurate description of the book. Lea is not merely “used to having him around.” The fact is, though she insists to herself that he’s an intolerable child (which, in fact, he is), she is completely in love with him, and the forced separation (force by the social conventions of the socially unconventional world they belong to) damages her and leaves her as empty as it does him. Indeed, this renowned courtesan, who though in middle age is likely still in demand among some of the more discerning men her own age, renounces any sex life, even any quality of her personal sexual being, when he leaves her.

It’s an interesting relationship. Cheri has the traditional “woman’s” role. He’s pretty and fragile and irrational and emotional, petted and pretty and barely a toy, and desperately in need of someone to take care of him. Lea has the traditional “man’s” role. She’s competent and levelheaded, independent and strong. She knows he’s foolish and immature, and her good sense tells her he’s worthless, but she loves him desperately nonetheless. She tells herself early on that she can’t bear to see Cheri inflicted on the poor young girl he’s engaged to. That is not her true concern. Her true concern is losing the man she loves.

Really, they aren't suited to anyone but each other. Yet the idea of their remaining together is, by their society's standards, deeply offensively wrong. Worse than immoral—for the dictates of the demimonde do not encompass such things as morality—it is impossible. And as members of their society, they surrender to its demands. And as a result they are both psychologically devestated in quite seperate ways. Not surprisingly, it is Lea who has the strength to survive the rupture of their relationship—a tearing asunder that in "The Last of Cheri" is surely to be equated with the Belle Epoque's annihilation by the atrocity that was World War I—while Cheri is weak and incapable of living in the aftermath, destroyed utterly.