Chapter 5 - Far from the Father of Personal Pre-History: Westmoreland’s Colette

Summary

Colette's relationship to the first husband prominent in her life and writing, the infamous Willy, Henry Gauthiers-Villars, dominates in Wes Westmoreland's eponymous biographical period film of 2018. The movie garnered many nominations and kudos for its direction, Dominic West’s, Keira Knightley’s, and Denise Gough's performances, the costumes, and its contributions to LGBTQ cinema. It also won an international award for Thomas Adès's music. Yet critics, especially scholarly readers, have overlooked or given only a superficial reading of the film.

The cursory reviews tend to focus on the dominant presence of Willy as well as the identity politics of 2018, without agreeing on whether these elements are strengths or weaknesses. The reviews, however, implicitly bring to light the principal questions Westmoreland raises, as I will show.

Colette limits itself primarily to her early years, especially to the ramifications of her marriage to Willy. Not a weakness of the film, this limitation selects the events that unlock a better understanding of her autofiction and the incestual desire driving it. In my psychoanalytic reading, Westmoreland poses vital questions on the sources of her writing and life, namely the parent–child relationship, its sexual aspects, and its implications for complex identity politics.

Julia Kristeva's theories on the importance of both the father of personal or individual pre-history and masculine identifications in Colette's life and work contribute to my approach to the movie. While she does not mention it, those who do analyze the film often speak of Dominic West's apparent overshadowing of Keira Knightley's portrayal of the author, as in the case of Louis Jourdan's performance seeming to outshine that of Leslie Caron discussed in my preceding chapter on Vincente Minnelli's adaptation. In both cases, these critics speak of the dominance of the male figures as if they distort the thought and life of Colette, and thus minimize the female agency she promoted.

Unlike the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Kristeva focuses on female psychology in her theories on the child's early encounters with a male parent who is androgynous, particularly in his behavior.