I was surprised that "Colette" was made as an English film, and I still feel it would have been better as a French one, in spite of considerable efforts having been made to capture the atmosphere of that era. I read the Claudine books at school- the school library wasn't too strict on censorship of novels in French! - Chéri, etc, later and recently a biography (because we were discussing La Maison de Claudine (different from the earlier books) in my French literature class, so I wasn't going to be a casual critic. The film provides a somewhat santitised view of her life, and has important factual errors and omissions- presumably to make her likeable. Colette was an important figure in the French literary and world of her time, however, and it's selling her short (and the viewers) to present her in this impoverished version.
Review of Colette
