Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Tartuffe (1984)
Director: Gérard Depardieu
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Depardieu's directorial debut is difficult to assess, since it is little more than a long, sombre and stately record of the Molière play. The sets are minimal, and since the camera doesn't move much, the film exists for the performances. Happily, these are excellent. As the grasping, lecherous cleric who takes over a gullible man's household, Depardieu is arrestingly different from the comically robust reading embodied in Anthony Sher's stage performance. This false devout is a loathsome creation, his cunning as bloodless as his white face make-up. His evil is beyond explanation, like something vampirical from German Expressionist cinema; and the closing shot of him lying powerless on the floor, staring into the camera, is deeply unsettling. The hapless householder Orgon (Périer) is persuaded to surrender his daughter - a stunning moment from Laptower as she screams soundlessly - and his property to the intruder, and only comes to his senses when his wife (Elisabeth Depardieu) exposes Tartuffe as a lecher. One either surrenders to the slow drip of Molière's mesmerism or one doesn't.Author: BC
Cast & crew
Director: Gérard Depardieu
Producer: Margaret Ménégoz
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, François Périer, Elisabeth Depardieu, Hélène Laptower full cast
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 138 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now