It’s gonna be interesting seeing if actual Black folk will go see Chevalier.
Although it’s a period piece/biopic about a person of color standing up to oppressive whities who are continually trying to keep a brotha down, it is also a costume drama set in 18th-century France, starring fancy muhfuckas dressed in frilly-ass clothes like they’re dancing with Madonna in the ‘90s. Movies made about that era aren’t exactly popular among the brothas and sistas. I’m sure they’re out there, but when was the last time you heard a person of color say Dangerous Liasons is one of their favorite films?
In all likelihood, all those aunties who got moist watching Rege-Jean Page get his burn on in Bridgerton might be front-and-center for Chevalier, which also features a light-skinned brotha having a torrid relationship with a fair-skinned maiden. The brotha in this case is Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), also known as French-Caribbean violinist and composer Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He’s first seen showing up Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a concert, as Bologne basically challenges Mozart to a violin battle and blows the white boy out the water. This is a compact version of the drama Mozart had with Bologne, who was apparently the inspiration for the dark-skinned antagonist in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).
Harrison is all cocky, flamboyant swagger as Bologne, a bastard child of a Senegalese African slave and a French plantation owner who grows up to become a renowned violinist/composer, a badass fencer, and a confidant/gossip buddy to Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton). Before his daddy dropped him off at the orphanage/school, he told his spawn to be excellent at everything. He eventually becomes talented and dashing enough to have aging stars like diva Marie-Madeleine Guimard (Minnie Driver, as bitchy as she wanna be) lusting after his pantaloons.
When Bologne develops a production to show he can head the Paris Opera, he learns his talent can only take him so far. He brings in Marie-Joséphine de Comarieu de Montalembert (Samara Weaving, one of the many Margot Robbie doppelgängers out there), a gal with the voice of an angel, to star. Unfortunately, she’s trapped in a loveless marriage with an arts-despising general (Marton Csokas, just mean & angry for no gotdamn reason) who doesn’t want his wife out there singing like a whore. That still doesn’t stop our boy from not only giving her the lead, but embarking on a standard-issue, chocolate-and-vanilla affair.
Things go south really quickly for our boy — even Marie Antoinette isn’t there for him when he needs help. (Big shocker!) Thankfully, his recently freed momma (Ronke Adekoluejo) is around to teach him how to be Black again, and remind him of simple things like rhythm and percussion and dancing on-beat. He also has woke, rebelling white pal Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (Alex Fitzalan) urging him to join the Resistance. When our protagonist gets cornrows, you some I’m-Black-y’all shit is about to go down.
This fact-based bodice ripper starts getting interesting when the hero stops being bourgeois and starts being militant. The people of color behind the camera — Jamaica-born, Canada-bred TV director Stephen Williams (Lost, Westworld), TV scribe Stefani Robinson (Atlanta, What We Do in the Shadows) and composer Kris Bowers (who has composed for Bridgerton) — keep things predictably fancy-schmancy until the third act, when Bologne uses his talents to be a brotha who’s ready to revolt. (They do maintain reverence to Bologna’s story, making sure the actual-factuals are intact amidst the precious melodrama.)
Again, I don’t know how much of the Black population will take in Chevalier. But they should give it a viewing. It may be told in a saucy, saditty manner, but when it’s all said and done, it’s still a Black-ass movie.
B
“Chevalier” is in theaters Friday.
