San Francisco Chronicle: Review - Pfeiffer at her peak in 'Cheri'

By Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpt
June 26, 2009

Now that she's past 50, can we all stop holding Michelle Pfeiffer's looks against her and just admit that she's a great actress? I know she doesn't look like one or carry on like one, and her way of speaking is just plain, middle-class American, of a kind you might hear in any shopping mall from coast to coast.

But since "Married to the Mob" (1988), Pfeiffer, in her own unfussy way, has been chalking up a series of rich performances, full of intuition, subtlety and psychological insight. And her latest film, "Cheri," finds her at the height of her ability, in a role worthy of her maturity and emotional intelligence.

Pfeiffer's particular talent is a capacity to express emotion without showing it, to play someone in the midst of turmoil who knows she cannot allow others to read what she's feeling - yet she shows those feelings to us. In "Cheri," based on a pair of novels by Colette, she plays Lea, a courtesan coming to the end of a successful and lucrative career, a woman who has spent decades working within the constraints of public ritual. She's a master of self-presentation who is flawless in her style and dress and knows never to show a sign of weakness...

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