Stephen Frears talks Pfeiffer's 'Chéri'

After their first collaboration Dangerous Liaisons snagged three Oscars, it's no surprise that director Stephen Frears and Michelle Pfeiffer have teamed up again for another film set in the world of French aristocracy. Chéri sees Pfeiffer's Lea embark on a six-year relationship with the son of a courtesan (Rupert Friend). We caught up with the esteemed director to chat about the romantic drama.

Did you feel you had to make Chéri faithful to the original Colette novel?
"Well you soon notice that the novel matters a lot to people and I know how easy it is to f**k it up. I start off with an innate respect for [screenwriter] Christopher Hampton and, through him, Colette so of course you treat them with respect."

Did Michelle take a lot of convincing to come aboard?
"I spoke to her on the Friday and she accepted on the Monday. It didn't surprise me!"

Had she changed much in the years since Dangerous Liaisons?
"Well we'd all grown older - we were children when we made Liaisons."

How did you come to cast Rupert?
"[I'd] never heard of him - he shot a test... We started off trying to cast an American boy and then you discovered that young American men couldn't do it. The world was so unfamiliar to them and they were somehow apologising for their bad characters and Rupert had no hesitation in playing a bad character, he was quite straightforward about it."

He's described in the film as having no character, was that difficult for him to play?
"He was effortlessly superficial! He's a lovely chap."

How do up-and-coming actors like Toby Kebbell cope when they have to work with Michelle Pfeiffer?
"I doubt Tony Kebbell has recovered from having to give Michelle a massage! I'd have thought he was still walking around dazed from the experience - they were always touching. Poor chap! He's a bloke from Nottingham and she's a big star from Hollywood but in the end they're good actors wanting to be good."

Did you find it difficult to recreate '20s France on a relatively small budget?
"What I discovered more and more about this film - this whole business of raising money - so there were things that I didn't know about which went into the cost of it that I didn't know about. My bit - the money that was actually spent making the film was quite straightforward but behind it all there's a whole other world. You learn about the price of the pound against the dollar - all the stuff that's been in the papers about the credit crunch - you start to discover what it means. The financial charges were horrendous."

Chéri is out in cinemas this Friday.