Joyfully surprised and awed by this pair. Sad and full of rainy beauty, Chéri's (1920) narrative was leaps and bounds ahead of contemporary counterparts. Frenchwoman Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in full) writes with a boldness many writers would not attempt for another twenty years.
Chéri behaves like a movie, with perfectly timed flash-backs and emotional cliff-hangers that keep an audience holding their breath. The scenes and topics of conversation are uniquely French—taking place in big, quiet rooms and leafy neighborhoods where the rhythm of time is defined by the change of the seasons. It tells about the handsome Chéri: insecure, cruel and callous from an unstructured and pampered upbringing, and his love for the wealthy courtesan Léa, a beautiful woman in her forties. They thrive as mutual parasites: Léa acting as a maternal lover and Chéri playing a spoiled youth. Their relationship, set mostly from atop an unmade bed, see-saws from impetuous arguments to inevitable make-up. They are not immediately likable—Chéri is down-right repulsive sometimes. But their world is insular and charmingly confined where their flaws fail to wreak havoc throughout.
That is until Chéri eventually decides to "grow up" and marry a woman more his age (obviously with heaps of money, his mother wouldn’t approve of anyone with less). He lands on nineteen year-old Edmée, gorgeous and innocent and primed to be betrayed. She resigns herself to her husband’s antic tastes in a newly designed home of purple walls, teal carpeting, and gouache furniture. Chéri quickly finds husbandly responsibilities aren’t for him and leaves Edmée for six months to decide if he is truly in love with, not simply attached to, Léa. There is a heart wrenchingly honest scene towards the end.
The Last of Chéri (1926) returns to Chéri, smartly matured by years at the front during the First World War. He and his wife are mutually and comfortably estranged, and Chéri embarks on a wandering self-imposed exile: revisiting old characters, taking drives and walks, letting memories surge through him at the whim of the weather. He has become soulful and sympathetic, without ever losing the awe inspiring beauty of the first sentences of the story. Léa makes a reappearance speaking wisdom undoubtedly Colette's own. It ends tragically, the usual odds and ends of a love story neatly tucked in.
A fantastic short read.