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Last week, I reviewed the documentary series, Walking Through History. Tina is reading books by Anthony Horowitz and Val McDermid.
The film begins when she is a young woman having an affair with an older man, an author known by his one-name pseudonym, Willy. They marry and Colette becomes part of Willy's "factory" of ghost writers. It turns out that he pays other people to write much of the material published under his name. When Colette tells him some of her stories from school, he has her write them as a book which eventually becomes the best seller, Claudine à l'école, Claudine at School.
Obviously, this is a French story, but it's a British movie starring Keira Knightly as Colette and Dominic West as Willy. The script is in English. When we see what people are writing, however, the words are French.
The countryside was filmed in rural locations in England. The scenes in Paris were shot in Budapest.
The story in the film ends many years before Colette wrote Gigi, the novella that eventually became the Hollywood musical starring Lesley Caron and including a memorable performance by Maurice Chevalier.
I knew almost nothing about Colette, so I appreciated learning much more about her in this film.
Colette is currently available streaming on Netflix which is how we watched it.
Have you seen Colette? What did you think?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
