Moliere
This lighthearted romp imagines an episode in the life of the French playwright and actor Moliere that serves as inspiration for many of his later plays. Familiarity with his plays would have added an extra layer of appreciation for the movie (so I gathered from Anne-Marie’s reaction), but even being woefully ignorant of his works, the movie is still quite enjoyable. Moliere is plagued by a simultaneous gift and scorn for farce. He yearns to produce serious theater but is absolutely terrible at it. He learns, through his extended stay at the manor of a wealthy aristocrat, that comedy can be used to explore human truths just as well. Moliere, played by Romain Duris, is employed by Monsieur Jourdain to train him to act so that he can impress a young widowed Countess with whom he is besotted. Jourdain is buffoonish and deluded by his own dreams of impressing the pretty Countess even though she is snobbish and unappealing and his own wife is both beautiful and interesting. Moliere lives in their mansion pretending to be a priest educating Jourdain’s daughter so as not to arouse the suspicions of Madame Jourdain. He arouses something else entirely. The framework for a farce is thus built into this episode of Moliere’s life, and in the imagination of the screenwriters Laurent Tirard and Gregoire Vigneron, the storey of Jourdain’s rehabilitation inspires Moliere’s later plays.