If you aren't familiar with Moliere's play on Don Juan, and are more familiar with Don Juan de Marco, you might think the French would have more fun. That isn't exactly Moliere's play Dom Juan ou le festin de pierre. Jacques Weber, a French actor, has adapted Moliere's play and stars as the title character in the grim 1998 Don Juan.
For those unfamiliar with the play, the play begins after Don Juan has seduced Elvire, a young woman in a nunnery. He has already lost interest and now pursues a couple who are happily in love, a love that Don Juan means to destroy by seducing the woman.
Unfortunately for Don Juan, good fortune smiles on the couple and Don Juan's plans fail, leaving his boat to sink. He is saved by a poor peasant. The peasant has a lovely girlfriend who Don Juan proceeds to seduce and yet, one girl is not enough, so he flirts with another.
In one scene, he cleverly plays each woman off the other, swearing undying love for both. He and his servant, Sganarelle, leave the women and attempt to return to their home. On the way, Don Juan is pursued by Elvire's brothers, who are determined to avenge her loss of honor. Don Juan chances upon the statue of a man he killed. He jests and invites the statue to dinner and the statue accepts.
Weber is gray-haired, with a large and imposing frame. He is husky in a way that suggests the aging of a once impressive physique into softness. His Don Juan is a humorless man, blustering and trading mostly on his position for conquests in bed. He doesn't charm women as much as feed them their dreams, and nourish their fantasy of conquering and reforming a bad boy – or he plays on their greed and vanity — a peasant woman's dream of becoming a princess — or at least, a lady of aristocratic standing.
Michel Boujenah as Sganarelle is his dour servant and angry conscience. His position is thankless. His fate, to have his master die without paying him his wages, means he will live in poverty and destitution. Instead of a whine and a shrug, we have Sganarelle left destitute as a sidewalk beggar in a time before tell-all book deals on celebrities' scandalous lives. How times have changed.
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