Indeed, especially since there's already a very famous movie with that title (ambitious, and on the whole very good. Also, very very long). Unlike the recent comedy, that one iss a serious biography directed by a famous French stage director, spanning Molière's whole life. The only disappointement in that one for me was that there was too few stage scenes, especially in his scuccesful years at Versailles. I would have loved to see more of those in a period film, as Molière isn't (or very rarely) played as it was when he created his shows. Nowadays, they stick to the play, but they used to be the 17th century version of a broadway show, with machines, a full musical score by Lully, ballet dancers and singers. I've seen Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme staged that way many years ago, and that was quite impressive.

The comedy is just a light comedy, but it's quite witty and clever. Molière was put in prison for debts for a short while between his years as a touring actor and his beginnings as a playwright. Nothing is known of how he got released and what he's done before he suddenly re-appeared in Paris, where he began to write his own shows. The comedy imagines a moronic bourgeois got him out to hire him to help him write a play to impress a "préciseuse" he wishes to become his mistress. To hide this from his wife, he forces Molière to take the disguise of a Dévot. Of course, the "false dévot" falls in love with the bourgeois's wife and becomes her lover. And so on. It's a rather hilarious melting pot of all of Molière's plays and characters. It's funnier with some knowledge of the plays, but it's funny even without.

L'Autre Dumas I'll try to catch next week-end. I fear it might never come out on DVD this side of the ocean (too many European movies don't, thanks to the evil American studios ).