Moliere

Laurent Tirard’s sumptuous and seductive comedy, MOLIERE, starring Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) in the title role, will open across the UK on July 13 through Pathé Distribution. Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante and Ludivine Sagnier co-star in this highly entertaining fictionalised account of the mysterious ‘lost months’ in the celebrated playwright’s life.

Paris,1644: 22-year-old Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is not yet the writer recognised by history as Molière, the father and master of comic satire, author of The Misanthrope and Tartuffe, and a dramatist to rank alongside Shakespeare and Sophocles. Far from it. He is, in fact, a failed actor. Awash in debt and pursued by bailiffs, Jean-Baptiste persists in staging tragedies in which he acts (badly) until one day he disappears, having been imprisoned by his impatient creditors.