KNIGHTLEY IN SHINING ARMOR

THERE IS A moment in director Wash Westmoreland’s biopic Colette when the titular character, played with perspicacious wit and androgynous sensuality by Keira Knightley, sheds the trappings of turn-of-the-20th-century Paris—the high-buttoned dress and the corset—and dons a man’s suit. With her hair already angularly bobbed in a nod to the teenager she created in her Claudine novels, Colette’s transformation is electric.

It’s also purely indicative of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s persona. The trailblazing writer engaged in relationships with men, women, and trans-masculine-identifying people circa the Belle Époque, and both her takes place more than 100 years ago, the pansexual bohemian feminist who stepped out of her husband’s shadow to become the most famous female French author in the world is very of the current cultural moment in LGBTQ visibility and #MeToo feminism.