La Petite Lili

Anton Chekhov goes into the movie business in Claude Miller's canny if uneven riff on The Seagull, which updates the story to contemporary France and moves the action from the theatrical to the cinematic world in more ways than one. The linchpin of the plot is an apparently naïve but actually shrewd girl named Lili (Ludivine Sagnier), who uses her relationship with a young artist (in Chekhov a playwright, now an aspiring filmmaker named Julien) to worm her way into the circle of his actress-mother's friends and become famous herself. For the first half, La Petite Lili follows the original quite closely, but in the second it is  much freer in the treatment of Chekhov's themes, as Lili, who's become a famous model and movie star, hears that Julien, whom she eventually rejected, is about to make a film about their past (in effect filming what we've already seen), and begs him to let her play herself. Parts of this re-imagining of Chekhov come off as a trifle thin, but overall it's a deft and clever transposition, especially for those familiar with the original play, who will find it an intriguing exercise in cinematic translation. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include text interviews with director Miller and co-star Sagnier, a text director's biography, a photo gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a paltry extras package for a solid film.] (F. Swietek)