Thursday, April 12, 2007 , Updated 8:21 a.m., May 4, 2007
Movie review: The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages)
Revenge of the LBD
As The Page Turner (director/writer Denis Dercourt's sly and stylish revenge drama) opens, we find young Mélanie Prouvost (played with dispassionate intensity by the precocious Julie Richalet) concentrating so heavily on her keyboard technique that she's practicing - perhaps subliminally - on her bedclothes after lights-out.
The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages)
As a young girl, Melanie attends an important audition to obtain subsidised piano lessons--necessary to pursue her dream of being a professional musician. However, the arrogant disregard of one of the judges--famous concert pianist Ariane Frouchecourt--shatters her confidence; she blows her chance and departs in tears. More than a decade later, with her own musical hopes long since abandoned, Melanie returns--now as an attractive, poised young woman--and proceeds to insinuate herself into the life of her former nemesis: becoming first her onstage page-turner, then her friend and confidante, and finally, her destroyer.
Source: Cinema Source
See, Mélanie's parents operate a butcher shop in Paris, and the world of music that they've set her up in (via piano lessons) has given her a taste for beauty amid a life of - well - blood and guts, basically. So now that the ten-year-old has the chance to take the next step in her music career - entry into a prestigious conservatory - she's determined to make the most of it.
But competitive piano inhabits a cruel and uncompromising plane of existence where second chances are scarcer than G-flat minor concerti, so when an inconsiderate judge distracts the young girl by allowing an autograph-seeking fan into the performance area, Mélanie loses her composure and the 3/8 jig is abruptly up - along with her budding career as a musician. She calmly boxes up her plaster bust of Beethoven (or is it Bach?) and locks down the keyboard lid on the piano in her parent's apartment. Case closed.
Ten years later, we find Mélanie (in the guise of actress Déborah François) - still wearing the same sensible white stockings and with hair pulled back severely into a bun - beginning an internship in a Paris legal office, where she puts her single-minded concentration to work at filing and organizing. Her boss, Jean Fouchécourt (Pascal Greggory), admires the young woman's dedication, and when the need for a nanny arises at his countryside estate he eagerly accepts Mélanie's application for the position. This is when things start to get interesting.
Because Mme Fouchécourt (Catherine Frot), you see, is the selfsame inconsiderate examiner whose distraction KO'd Mélanie's hopes for piano-playing stardom a decade previously.
Déborah François as the succulent and diabolical Mélanie Prouvost
At first we wonder whether this might all be coincidental, because the strikingly lovely Ms. François does not telegraph her motivations with Snidely Whiplash grins and moustache-twirling (or whatever the equivalent of moustache-twirling might be among the fairer sex... use your imagination) - rather, she plays things close to her well-proportioned vest by easing into the Fouchécourt milieu and establishing warm relations with the family - including the offending Ariane, now the pianist member of a struggling classical trio working to establish their careers and build a reputation for themselves in the performance world, and the Fouchécourt progeny: a piano-tinkling young fellow named Tristan (Antoine Martynciow).
Coincidence? As events progress, this possibility fades, replaced by the certainty that what's in process here is an elaborate and diabolical revenge plot. Mélanie's stratagem for neutralizing the lecherous happy-handed cellist practically writes itself, while what she has planned for her primary nemesis involves an unexpected romantic tactic that takes all participants by surprise.
If this were a sensationalized Hollywood production, the plot would involve gross character manipulations and blunt force shock tactics. Dercourt's production takes a more subtle and organic approach to payback - for, as his countryman Pierre Choderlos de Laclos demonstrated long ago, "revenge is a dish best served cold."
An unexpected romance
The seduction approach proves believable because the succulent mademoiselle François has the doe-eyed, bodice-bobbling goods to pull it off - and I'm only peripherally referring to the LBD she dons for on-stage appearances.
A word or two (or several dozen, depending on how this goes) about the score (composed and orchestrated by Jérôme Lemonnier): it, too, is an exercise in cleverness, with Mélanie's post-conservatory musical signature devolving to the insistent striking of a single piano key. This motif carries forward into Mélanie's young adulthood and then bursts into melody as the pins connecting her latticework of revenge begin to fall into place. Of course, it's melody in a minor key.
The Page Turner opens locally on May 4 at the Magnolia Theater.
JUDGING A BOOK: "You'll need to be meticulous. I'm sure you are, you look it." - Mélanie's office manager, regarding her internship duties.
WANNA BET?: "The page turner makes no difference." - violinist to Mme Fouchécourt.
BUT SHE'S ABOUT TO LEARN: "I give concerts - I don't teach." - Mme Fouchécourt to Mélanie.
