Doesn’t this cover make the movie Cheri look like a delightful playful romp?

(image from Amazon.com)

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates as aging courtesans! Rupert Friend as eye candy! “Immensely entertaining!” as a review bite! This movie is going to be FUN!

Ha ha haaaaaaaa.

What we have here is a movie more like Dangerous Liaisons (which Michelle Pfeiffer was also in): dark themes, French costumes, drug/sex/alcohol abuse, undereye circles, and unusually-persistent sexual obsession misrepresented as True Love. I don’t think Rupert Friend smiles a single time, and his hairstyle is unflattering, and he’s an unappealing mooch.

The two best and most believable characters in the whole thing are Frances Tomelty as Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer’s maid), and Felicity Jones as Rupert Friend’s wife. Not only does Felicity Jones do a very nice job Epitomizing Youth for contrast, but she also does a good job portraying a girl with deliberately suppressed spirit and intelligence. And Rose provides Sensible contrast that makes Michelle Pfeiffer look even sillier, plus she makes me wish very badly I had a maid who’d been with me for decades.

What I thought the movie was trying to say (and doing a good job saying, too) was “This is what happens if you mistake sexual persistence for love, and then one of you finds an actual love relationship.” But the ending makes it clear that we were supposed to see Perfect Love in the relationship made up of nothing more than flirty insult-humor, arch remarks, sexual attraction, and a mutual affinity for a decadent lifestyle. So then the ending is like “Here’s a bonus kick to the stomach for suffering through this whole thing.”