Cheri-Bibi: A dusty, dramatic curiosity

Is it worth your time?

If you have a soft spot for heavy, theatrical melodrama from a different era, maybe. If you need your movies to move faster than a glacier, stay away. It feels like an endurance test for anyone who isn't already obsessed with early 20th-century stage-to-screen adaptations.

Cheri-Bibi is one of those films where everyone acts like they’re trying to reach the back row of a massive theater. The gestures are huge. The expressions are frozen in time.

It reminds me a bit of the heavy-handed sincerity in La cruz de un ángel, where the stakes are always life-or-death and the silence between lines feels like it lasts for a decade.

Odd moments and observations

• The lighting in the prison scenes is distractingly flat. You can tell they were trying to hide the limitations of the set.
• Max Coll is doing a *lot* of work with his eyebrows. Like, maybe too much?
• There is a scene near the middle where a character stares at a wall for what felt like forty seconds. My mind definitely wandered to my grocery list.

It’s not quite as charming as The Cat and the Fiddle. It lacks that spark. Everything here feels heavy, like it was made with wet cement.

There’s a specific sequence involving a disguise that honestly had me laughing. It’s so transparently ridiculous that you have to wonder if the director knew, or if they were playing it completely straight. I suspect they were dead serious.

It’s not a film that invites you in. It demands you sit still and listen to the tragedy unfold. Sometimes I enjoy that, but today? It just felt like homework.

The dialogue is thick with exposition. Characters rarely say what they mean; they say what the plot needs us to know for the next scene. It’s clunky. Very clunky.

I found myself looking at the background extras more than the leads. There’s one guy in the second act who seems to have forgotten he’s supposed to be distressed. He’s just standing there, looking like he’s waiting for a bus. Classic.

It’s not a disaster. It’s just... very much a product of its time and place. If you love this specific kind of old, dusty drama, you’ll probably find something to enjoy. If you're looking for a hidden masterpiece, you might want to look elsewhere.