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Review: Prepare Your Eardrums For 'Marguerite'

"Poor Mozart" is a phrase heard a few times in Marguerite, a satirical French period piece set in the 1920s about an uber-rich baroness whose tone deafness is known to everyone but her. Played by the impeccable and cherub-faced Catherine Frot (who won the French equivalent of an Oscar for her performance), the titular character is narcissist so full of herself she's almost adorable. Based on the ridiculed American signer Florence Foster Jenkins (whom Meryl Streep will be playing in an up-coming film from Stephen Frears), Marguerite Dumont will capture your sympathy, even as you laugh at her murderous attempts at classic arias.

Of course, it's not really Marguerite's fault she's a butcher. No one in her greedy milieu has had the courage to tell the wealthy woman that she's not the soprano she thinks she is. This includes her unfaithful husband, Georges (André Marcon) and her loyal butler, Madelbos (Denis Mpunga). The two have orchestrated a conspiracy of silence that serves each of them differently, and since Marguerite never performs outside of an in-house music club, they don't think that indulging the tin-eared singer is offensive to anything but eardrums. That all changes when a journalist (Sylvain Dieuaide) sneaks into a show and publishes a piece valley describing the baroness as singing "as though she's exercising a demon" – something the poor woman takes as a compliment, a rave review.

This sets in motion two public performances, one of which is a wild and hilarious art piece, orchestrated by the journalist's anarchist friend, and the other is a massive charity show, for which the singer hires a washed-up opera great (Michel Fau) to be her vocal coach. And, no, this doesn't go where you think it does. The coach doesn't stirrup Marguerite's passion into a semblance of talent; instead the film prompts you to wonder about the nature of truth and beauty and how they relate to art and life. For even as we admire Marguerite's courage to take the stage, to attempt to win the affections of the audience and her cheating husband, her plight is so futile that one wonders about when it's actually moral to put a knife in the heart of someone's passion.

Director Xavier Giannoli strikes an impressive balance in making the film both very funny and strikingly sad. What he doesn't do so well is command the story. There are subplots, like one with the journalist and a rising young singer (played by the beautiful Christa Théret), that seem promising but go nowhere. Cutting them would save nearly 30 minutes from a film that, as it stands, runs just over two hours. Aside from these issues, however, Marguerite reminds us that "singers can't hear themselves." It's a phrase that'll get you thinking about today's media landscape, and how Marguerite's story couldn't possibly have happened in 2016. Perhaps with the advent of autotune, the baroness, with her feather-covered props, could then have her cake and eat it, too.

Marguerite is playing at the Edina Cinema.

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