Mixing madness with magic music

De-Lovely

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)
Japanese title: Gosenfu no Love Letter
Director: Irwin Winkler
Running time: 126 minutes
Language: English
Opens Dec. 11

[See Japan Times movie listings]

"You have a dazzling talent and a life to go with it. What can you possibly be afraid of?" says socialite Linda Lee (Ashley Judd) to Parisian dandy and emerging composer Cole Porter (Kevin Kline), after witnessing one of his sessions at the piano.

The time is 1918, when the Jazz Age is beginning to flower and the backdrop is the City of Lights.

Linda and Cole are in a salon filled with the decadent, the fashionable and the gorgeously wealthy. Linda's neck is adorned with her trademark long string of pearls and Cole is immaculate in a tuxedo and jeweled cuff links. Her question sounds rhetorical and yet Cole's face as he searches for an answer is tinged with anxiety, as if he already knows how fragile his success could be, as if he almost sees the lurking shadow of misfortune and pain. But the next minute, Cole is back to being his cocky self, brimming with sophisticated seductiveness. His moment of fear is gone. He asks Linda to dance and she assents, marking the start of their famed 38-year romance.