I wasn't very interested in the story but I watched it because there's Michelle Pfeiffer in it. As I thought it's not very interesting, and the ending left me very... I don't know, unsatisfied, maybe. It wasn't bad, but it was very bitter. It's about love and age, a sort of psychological story.
Chéri (Rupert Friend) is a young man, son of ex-courtesan Charlotte (Kathy Bates) who starts a relationship with Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer), old friend/enemy of his mother. In a way his mother asked Lea to 'take care' of him, she wanted it, I don't know if it was to keep him away from bad companies or if she simply wanted him to live a little.
I don't like this Chéri: he's a spoiled brat, arrogant and selfish, but Lea likes him, and they stay together for six years. At this point Chéri is 25 years old and his mother plans a wedding for him with the daughter of another rich courtesan like Lea and herself. Lea reacts with wonderful dignity, making no scenes and going on with her life , but it hurts so much only her maid Rose has any idea of how much. Lea has fallen in love with him.
Chéri marries a young and pretty girl who means nothing for him, and while he's on his honeymoon Lea leaves and nobody knows where she's gone. She tries to forget him, but in vain. Knowing that she's gone Chéri feels lost, leaves his home and stays at a hotel for a few months. A friend sends Lea a postcard telling her that Chéri left his wife, and Lea smiles her beautiful smile and thinks he'll divorce her, and immediately comes back home. Chéri knows of her return the same night, being outside her house. Knowing that she's back, Chéri goes back to his wife, thinking he's ready for his new life, but he's not. He goes back because, well, he kinda felt lost not knowing where she was, but now that she's home again, near him, he's not lost anymore, something like that.
Lea learns from his mother of his return home: his mother takes pleasure in hurting her, for sure. One night Chéri runs to her and enter the house deaf to the maid's protests and appears crazy jealous thinking she might have a new lover. She understands that he loves her, he says so himself, so they stay the night together and when morning comes Lea thinks of the two of them leaving together. In reply to something she says Chéri gets angry, saying he'll always be a boy with her, or something like that, and she understands that it can not work between them because there's too much age difference. It's very painful for her, she had just told him how much she loved him, how he was her great love, the love that comes only once in a lifetime, but now she tells him to go home, that he'll always want the youth his wife can offer him, and they say their last goodbye. The narrator voice says that he'll go to war, that he'll come back unharmed and one day he'll realize that Lea was his only love and that he let it go, and he will kill himself, and while it says so we see Lea looking at herself in the mirror, clearly feeling old, too old, as if Michelle Pfeiffer could ever look old, when all she has to do is smile and the sun shines from her face. Anyway, this is the end, right there. Bitter, as I said. Maybe if I had felt any sympathy for Chéri I would have liked the movie more, but I could not see anything in him, no reason at all why two women should be so madly in love with him.
Still, Michelle Pfeiffer was beautiful and fabulous as always.
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