Chéri

Chéri (2009) is a period drama directed by Stephen Frears — watch online on iFILM. Paris, the turn of the twentieth century. Léa is a retired courtesan who has built a comfortable life on wit and beauty. Chéri is the spoiled son of her oldest rival, Madame Peloux.

For six years they lived by an unspoken arrangement: she taught, he indulged. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Léa as a woman who knows the price of everything except her own longing. Rupert Friend's Chéri is all surface charm with a hollow centre. Kathy Bates and Felicity Jones round out a world where money, age and appearances settle every question. The screenplay by Christopher Hampton draws from two Colette novels — Chéri (1920) and The Last of Chéri (1926).

Frears, who previously dismantled romantic myths in Dangerous Liaisons, brings the same clear-eyed coldness here. The affair ends the way all arrangements do when one party quietly starts to feel too much. Stream Chéri (2009) online on iFILM.