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Love’s labor
Clare Peploe’s Marivaux mostly triumphs
BY SCOTT T. CUMMINGS

Triumph of Love
Directed by Clare Peploe. Written by Peploe with Marilyn Goldin and Bernardo Bertolucci, based on the play by Marivaux. With Mira Sorvino, Fiona Shaw, Ben Kingsley, Jay Rodan, Rachael Stirling, Ignazio Oliva, and Luis Molteni. A Paramount Classics release. At the Copley Place, the Kendall Square, and the West Newton and in the suburbs.

Way back in the ’90s, a craze for a little-known 18th-century French playwright swept through some of the USA’s more ambitious regional theaters. In his native land, however, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux is second only to Molière, justly celebrated for his delicate comedies of intrigue in which the self-deceived are brought around to hearing and then heeding the suppressed promptings of their own hearts. It would seem that, with their psychological complexity, his plays might adapt well to film’s introspective capacities — if it weren’t for all that period frou-frou.

Clare Peploe discovered Marivaux when she saw the Almeida Theatre’s 1999 production of The Triumph of Love in London (in an adaptation by Martin Crimp). What is remarkable about her film version of this 1732 play is its fidelity to the original. For better and worse, it sticks close to the script and to the period, preserving the play’s theatrical structure and pace. In the end, she even has the cast line up in modern dress for a curtain call, as if to remind us that this was all just a performance.

The film’s overtly theatrical nature may prove dull for the hardcore cinéaste; at the same time, Peploe’s filmic interventions — tiny jump cuts in the middle of a scene that seem at first like editing glitches; camera angles from high or low to force the action out of a proscenium-like frame — are apt to irritate anyone who just wants to watch a great play unfold on the big screen. Nevertheless, her Triumph of Love is a pleasant hothouse comedy that takes good advantage of a fine cast, splendid costumes designed by Metka Kosak, and the sumptuous Tuscan villas that provide its settings.

The complicated fairy-tale plot centers on the Princess (Mira Sorvino), who disguises herself as a young gentleman scholar named Phocion and presents herself to the reclusive philosopher Hermocrates (Ben Kingsley) and his scientist sister Leontine (Fiona Shaw). They live on a cloistered estate in misanthropic seclusion, having sworn off society and a life of emotion in favor of strict Enlightenment ideals. Their young ward, the handsome and noble Agis (Jay Rodan), is the object of the Princess’s desire and thus the reason for her disguise. But before revealing her love and identity, she must first win his friendship. To gain time, she pays suit to both brother and sister. Her success sets matters on a collision course that guarantees heartbreak for somebody.

Ben Kingsley and Fiona Shaw are perfectly cast as the celibate siblings whose long-dormant passions are resuscitated by the heroine’s misleading flirtations. At first, each of them offers a stiff and stern resistance, but unconscious gestures — Kingsley’s tugging on the finger of a glove with his teeth; Shaw’s sidelong blush in the face of a compliment — mark their gradual capitulation. Once they give in and love triumphs, they are reduced to romantic fools prancing about as fop and coquette in Kosak’s comic costumes. Their silliness becomes pathetic as the inevitable moment of reckoning approaches.

Mira Sorvino fares almost as well as the scheming, lovesick Princess. In this daunting role, she must somehow embody the force of love itself, both erotic and platonic, alluring yet pure, tender one moment and tyrannical the next. There is more than a touch of cruelty in her awakening of two different loves that cannot be requited; Sorvino softens the character by reacting with flashes of remorse. Marivaux also leaves open the possibility that the Princess succumbs to her own wiles and falls for her victims in the heat of her simulated passion, but Sorvino and Peploe leave this territory unexplored.

That choice is less troubling than Peploe’s decision to resolve Marivaux’s ambiguities with an all-out happy ending. For Hermocrates and Leontine, the triumph of love is best seen as bittersweet once the Princess abandons them, but Peploe sends the two back to their solitary studies full of joy and energy. Just as the Princess and Agis seal their love with a kiss, Leontine finally generates a literal spark of electricity in her laboratory. Her brother starts to sing a love aria from Rameau that is taken up by the rest of the cast in a joyous musical finale. Love is not that simple in Marivaux.

Issue Date: May 23 - 30, 2002
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