Cheri

The main reason to see Cheri is Michelle Pfeiffer. She plays the ageing courtesan Lea with a delicacy that's mostly lacking elsewhere in the film - Kathy Bates seems to think she's playing a pantomime dame. Lea's still beautiful, but aware that her lucrative years are almost up. Surrounded by grotesques who were once her colleagues and rivals, she stands apart even without the assistance of an array of sumptuous hats and gowns. No wonder Cheri is bewitched. Lea is presumably equally entranced by his youth as he had minimal loveable qualities. Most of the time in fact he is eminently punchable. Luckily, while Rupert Friend might bear a passing physical resemblance of Orlando Bland, he has considerably more talent. Cheri can be as venomous as his mother, appallingly selfish, but also has moments of barely understood vulnerability. Both he and Lea are ultimately destroyed by the trappings of wealth, essential as they are to both their lives.