By Erin Caine
Lifestyle Editor
At this point, many agree that British actress Keira Knightley has established herself as the woman to call for the lead role of a period piece.
From her Academy Award-nominated performance as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 iteration of “Pride & Prejudice” to her lead role in 2012’s “Anna Karenina,” she seems most at home as a plucky and refined 19th century heroine.
Her recent performance in the historical drama film “Colette” as the famous French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette situates Knightley in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The story follows a young Colette as she fights her domineering husband for her creative and emotional freedom.
In her review of the film, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times said it “takes a light, enjoyably fizzy approach to its subject. … The movie’s Colette is never as wild as you might hope for a literary titan and voluptuary who first writes herself into history with her ‘Claudine’ novels while bedding men and women alike.”
Indeed, though the film isn’t shy about its subject’s varied erotic experiences, unlike other notable historical films, “Colette” is essentially free of physical violence, scenes of warfare, and bloodshed.
Rather than propel itself along from one scene of upheaval to another, the film progresses as Colette’s own emotional maturity and sense of self progresses.
In this way, the film compels its audience to sympathize — demands the audience sympathize — with the feelings of a young, intellectually stifled woman who, throughout the film, must learn to break away from her husband’s oppression and find her own path.
Colette is a historical figure who, in virtually every regard, rejected what was accepted (or expected) and broke new ground for women at the time. Her life was a vibrant and rich one, and also full of much hardship.
The film perhaps seems “plotless” or “ambling” to viewers who don’t — or won’t — track Colette’s gradual emotional growth.
Recently, Knightley spoke to Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey about the gendered divide between “period piece” and “historical drama.”
For Knightley, it is no coincidence that the films that most routinely put young women at the forefront of the story are the ones that get mocked as “air-headed fantasy.”
Loughrey said that “there’s an underlying assumption that period dramas act purely as a form of escapism, incapable of any insight into the period they take place in.”
Counter to this assumption, “Colette” manages to be both firmly rooted in its time and place and transcend that time and place to discuss themes of LGBT identity and female liberation with grace. The film was released in the U.S. Sept. 21 to an approval rating of 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.