COLETTE
Starring Keira Knightley
“Colette ranks as one of the great roles for which Keira Knightley will be remembered.” – Variety
Keira Knightley stars as the eponymous French novelist, whose provocative debut (falsely credited to her husband) becomes the toast of Paris, triggering a battle for identity, equality, and self-determination at the dawn of the feminist age.
Colette (played with sumptuous feistiness by Knightley, Atonement 2007) arrives from the countryside as a young bride to Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy (Dominic West, The Affair), an older, notorious literary entrepreneur, and she is immediately swept into flamboyant, libertine society. At Willy’s prompt, she takes pen to paper and invents the loosely autobiographical Claudine novels, which take Paris by storm. The character Claudine becomes a veritable pop-culture icon, but Colette does not, since Willy takes authorial credit. To reclaim her literary voice, Colette must set out for new adventures, sans Willy.
One of France’s most important and ground-breaking twentieth-century writers, Colette’s dozens of volumes of provocative fiction, memoirs and journalism jubilantly bucked the societal constraints that were placed on women. Writer and director Wash Westmoreland’s (Still Alice 2014) mesmerising film tells the story of this iridescent artist’s creative awakening in turn-of-the-century Paris, a place as dynamic and modern as she was.
Accolades
Nominated – People’s Choice Award – Special Presentations – Toronto International Film Festival 2019
Official Selection – Sundance Film Festival 2018
Official Selection – BFI London Film Festicval 2018
Classification
M – Sex scenes and nudity
Dates & Times
General Public Screenings
Friday 1 February 2019 at 7:30pm
Sunday 3 February 2019 at 2pm
Saturday 9 February 2019 at 7pm
