CÉLESTE Movie Review

Percy Adlon's Céleste is based on the published memoirs of one Céleste Alberet, the woman who served as housekeeper to the reclusive, chronically ill Marcel Proust for the eight years leading up to his death in 1922. Wisely avoiding the temptation to resemble a miniature Remembrance of Things Past, or even to suggest a full portrait of the great writer's last years, Céleste instead is an impressionistic but unromanticized recreation of what one curious and intelligent woman observed in the everyday occurrences of Proust's life. If there are madeleine-style bites of information here that can lead to nuggets of literary revelation, they are hardly forced down our throats. In place of the standard creative artist biopic's insistence on linking specific events with artistic achievements, Céleste offers the pleasures of a keen observer's fascination with a flesh-and-blood man—albeit a mighty talented one. Adlon's film is refreshingly restrained in every way, as are the performances of Fassbinder discovery Eva Mattes as Céleste and Jürgen Arndt as Proust.

NEXT STOP … The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Stroszek, Swann in Love, Sugarbaby

1981 107m/C GE Eva Mattes, Jurgen Arndt, Norbert Wartha, Wolf Euba; D: Percy Adlon; W: Percy Adlon; C: Jurgen Martin; M: Cesar Franck. VHS NYF, FCT