Colette’s unapologetic queerness.
Colette, about the trailblazing writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who engaged in relationships with men and women, circa the Belle Époque, was directed by Wash Westmoreland who is gay.
Keira Knightley embodies the pansexual bohemian feminist who stepped out of her husband’s shadow to become one of the most famous female French authors in the world.
The film chronicles Colette’s rise to fame as she leaves behind her country upbringing to become the toast of Paris along with her husband, Willy (Dominic West), who spurs her to chronicle her life for his literary factory where only his moniker appears on everything that’s published.
The film shows Colette and Willy beginning an open relationship in which they end up bedding the same American socialite before Colette falls for the trans-masculine Missy (Denise Gough).
Transgender actors Rebecca Root and Jake Graf play a cisgender couple who flirt with her in a parlor scene.
Colette’s “was a voice that I wanted to hear. It was a voice that I wanted to speak,” Knightley told The Advocate about being drawn to the role. “I particularly want women, but I want men as well to kind of go, ‘Yes, I have a right to be myself, to explore my identity and my gender and to do it without shame and unapologetically.'”
