It was a voice that I wanted to speak,” Knightley told The Advocate about being drawn to the role. If Colette’s unapologetic queerness weren’t enough, transgender actors Rebecca Root and Jake Graf play a cisgender couple who flirt with her in a parlor scene.Ĭolette’s “was a voice that I wanted to hear. 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.īracing in its frank depiction of sexual freedom, 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). In the film directed by Wash Westmoreland, who is gay, Keira Knightley embodies the pansexual bohemian feminist who stepped out of her husband’s shadow to become the most famous female French author in the world. Colette, about the trailblazing writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who engaged in relationships with men, women, and trans-masculine-identifying people circa the Belle Époque, is queer to its core.
