The son of a slave who dared to go bow to bow with Mozart: BRIAN VINER reviews Chevalier

Chevalier (12A, 108 mins)

Verdict: Jobbing biopic

Judgement:

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (12A, 127 mins)

Verdict: too long and too loud

Judgement:

Chevalier’s best five minutes come right at the beginning, when we are introduced to our hero, Joseph Bologne (the excellent Kelvin Harrison Jr), illegitimate son of an aristocratic Frenchman and a Senegalese slave, at a Mozart concert in the 18th-century century Paris.

It really is a Mozart concerto. The star of the show is Wolfgang Amadeus himself, played by Joseph Prowen as a prudish diva. But when Mozart asks for requests, the unknown violinist Bologne impetuously and mischievously strides down the aisle to suggest that he is face to face with the great man.

If you remember the moment in 2009 when Susan Boyle first took the stage on Britain’s Got Talent, drawing ill-conceived ridicule from audiences and judges alike, that’s pretty much the scene here, in frock coats only and wigs.

Just the idea that a mixed-race guy could hold his own next to Mozart! But then he starts playing and of course he is sensational. It is the violin equivalent of the so-called dueling banjo scene in Deliverance (1972).

The audience is enchanted, while Mozart is first amazed and then furious. As Bologne takes the ovation, he storms into the wings to ask the 18th century versions of Ant and Dec: Who’s that bastard?

It’s a funny moment and, promisingly, seems to set us up for a comedic telling of the undeniably remarkable story of a man later named Chevalier de Saint-Georges – actually knighted – by a lovelorn queen, Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton). ).

It’s also largely a true story, though I expect there was some dramatic license with the dueling violins.

Disappointingly, however, the rest of Stephen Williams’ film never lives up to that captivating opening sequence, becoming a rather clumpy formulaic account of Bologne’s rise and inevitable fall. We know his fall is inevitable, because in a perfunctory flashback, after bringing the violin prodigy from Guadeloupe to install him in a posh French music academy, the nobleman father of Bologne tells him, “Don’t give anyone a reason to put you down.” .’ Such warnings in this type of scenario only mean one thing.

At first, the rise of Bologna is dizzying. After all, he is not just a virtuoso violinist; there are many other arrows to his bow. He is unspeakably handsome and a supreme swordsman (“you play your instrument as well as you wield your sword,” gushes the Queen, a line that sparked giggles at Vue Leicester Square on Tuesday night).

Anyway, she just thinks he’s fantastic, just like the fragrant Marie-Josephine de Montalembert (Samara Weaving), into whose bed he soon falls.

This seems likely sooner or later (spoiler alert: it is sooner) to arouse the wrath of her powerful husband, the Marquis de Montalembert, played one-dimensionally by Marton Csokas as a grinning rotter.

Nor is the Marquis pleased that Bologne has given Marie-Josephine, who sings like an angel, a leading role in his new opera. He wrote it as part of a competition to determine whether he or the German composer Gluck (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) will become maestro of the Paris Opera, expecting to take the honor himself, but you could say his Gluck is running low. .

Jealousy, snobbery and racism, plus his own hubris, conspire against him. So does the Queen, along with another opera star, La Guimard (Minnie Driver), who has never forgiven him for rejecting her sexual advances.

Women loom large in this story, possibly even larger than in real life. When a pregnant Marie-Josephine tells him their affair is over, Bologne goes into a terrible funk, until his mother, who has arrived from Guadeloupe for an awkward reunion, pleases him (and us) by bellowing, “Enough wallowing ! It is pathetic!’

His mother, by the way, is a woman of boundless wisdom who can point her son to his true destiny, which is to turn against his former patrons, embrace the causes of equality and freedom, and become a hero of the upcoming French Revolution.

We have long known that revolution is coming, as there are occasional shots fired from angry mobs in the streets. But Bologna’s change of heart still happens in clumsy haste at the end of the film, with captions informing us of what happened next.

If they get you to go out and google him, as they did with me, then I think Chevalier will have done his job. But in the end that’s all; a job biopic. His story deserves more.

Do the Transformers, those warring alien robots that transform into cars, trucks, planes, and now animals, deserve more? Really, it’s a moot point because whether they do or not, here they are again in Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, the seventh appearance in the film franchise inspired by the Hasbro toy.

It’s the usual too-long, too-loud, semi-fun extravaganza of wacky plot and clashing metal as the good robots, with the help of a few obligatory humans (Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback), strive to find a long-hidden key to the’ evil god’ Unicron (voiced by Colman Domingo), who consumes entire planets for fuel.

Getting his hands on it will grant him access to a portal through time and space, allowing him to rampage across the universe and chew on the planets he needs to stay energized.

I hate to say it, but having grown up hearing that a Mars a day helps you work, rest, and play, I’m on Unicron’s side.