Michelle Pfeiffer is ‘let down’ by Rupert Friend

Michelle Pfeiffer (centre) attended the world premiere of her new film Cheri, an adaptation of the Colette novel, at the Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday night. Her appearance in the movie has caused much excitement among the critics as it marks a reunion between the 50-year-old actress, the director Stephen Frears (right) and the screenwriter Christopher Hampton, all of whom last collaborated together 21 years ago on the Oscar-winning movie, Dangerous Liaisons.

Yet despite this stellar trio, the Times's critic, Stephen Walton, only felt minded to give the film, a tragic-comic love story in which Pfeiffer plays Cheri, a veteran courtesan, three stars.  

While he praises Frears's "pleasingly light touch" and he applauds Pfeiffer's "magnetic and subtle" performace, he feels that her co-star, Rupert Friend (left), the boyfriend of Keira Knightley, lets the whole enterprise down.

"A willowy, floppy-fringed Orlando Bloom-a-like, Friend is no match for Pfeiffer and unconvincing as an object of romantic, lustful obsession," writes Walton.
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