Fluid direction makes it easy to follow Tirard’s charming confection of a film, despite its welter of subplots and brisk pace.

1658: mud-spattered and weary, actor-playwright Moliere (Romain Duris) returns to Paris where Louis IVX’s brother has provided a theatre for performing the troupe’s popular comedies. After thirteen years touring the provinces, Moliere yearns for change, but in the past his self-penned tragedies attracted only derision and rotten vegetables from audiences. He was eventually imprisoned for debt. The film surmises ( in flashback) that chateau-owning Monsieur Jourdain, (Fabrice Luchini) intervenes and engages Moliere, disguised as a clergyman called Tartuffe, to coach him in the arts of seduction and pretend to tutor his daughter Henriette (Fanny Valette). Lavish presents have failed to impress the widowed marquise Jourdain has in his sights. In fact, his go-between, down-at-heel aristocrat Dorante, is pocketing them or pretending they are gifts from himself. Meanwhile Moliere, between writing fervent letters home to his wife, is attracted by Jourdain’s beautiful but neglected spouse Elmire (Laura Morante).

If ‘Moliere’ resembles John Madden’s ‘Shakespeare in Love’(1998) in inventing episodes in the life of a national playwright, the strident baroque music, gorgeous locations and costumes recall Peter Greenaways 'The Draughtsman’s Contract’(1982) and English Restoration Comedy with its disguises, intrigues and intercepted letters. Most of all, briskly yet meticulously directed, mirrors the comedies of Moliere himself, focussing on the upper-class hypocrisy and self-delusion he observed around him , with characters as ‘types’ mixed up in increasingly complex 'strategems'.


Nouveau-riche Jourdain craves artistic accomplishments and a title in the family but fails to master the flourishing bows required in the elite salons of the age, and is incapable of the witty banter which marks the gentleman or the elegant prose which may attract his chosen one’s attention. His attempt to marry his daughter into the aristocracy is thwarted by the females of his household , aided by the Moliere’s talent for scheming. Opportunist Dorante is ridiculous rather than menacing – ‘Work! Don’t mention the word!’ he says in comic horror to his son. Carelessly throwing his benefactor’s love-letter from a carriage window is an early signal of his amateur status when it comes to extortion. Although tempted by the bohemian lifestyle the dashing Moliere seems to offer, Elmire is restrained by genuine affection for husband and daughter. Moliere, ingeniously inventive and a talented comedian, appears too often, and once even literally, with egg on his face, to convince as a wife-stealer, falling as gracelessly into his mistress’s chamber as into a prison cell.


Romain Duris’s brooding presence, impressive in ‘The Beat My Heart Skipped’(De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrete)(2005) is surprisingly adept in comic scenes, as when he teaches Jourdain how to act like a horse, but an edge of doubt spoils both the romantic encounters with Elmire and the credulity of her role as muse and director to Moliere. The supporting players and editing are strong, with one or two overstrained comedy scenes, as when Jourdain is disguised as a dowager complete with a fan and overhears what the admired one really thinks of him. As in Restoration Comedy, the characters are improved by self-knowledge and resign themselves to what is best for them and for a society whose order is threatened when people don’t stick to their proper roles and capabilites. The ominous note struck by a shot of Moliere rushing though a field of poppies may remind us of future troubles but for the moment all is well in the rollicking world of seventeenth century France.