Everything I know about ______ I learned from ________.

Everything I know about __getting a man__ I learned from __Impromptu__ . In fact after viewing it again for the first time since the film’s original release in 1991, it’s clear that I learned all too much of my romantic technique from the 19th-century grandes artistes who are its subject. Judy Davis’ take on the fearless, cigar-smoking, breeches-wearing novelist George Sand – incidentally, also depicted here as an exemplary horsewoman, a good shot, and a loving mother – was all but irresistible to me. I could barely find it in my heart to forgive Chopin (the first in a long line of this kind of bashful suitor character from Hugh Grant) for his reluctance to surrender to such an incredible woman. The kind of impossibly direct and physically aggressive style of courtship favoured by the film’s heroine seemed like such a breath of fresh air after the Byzantine complexities of adolescent romance. But it turns out that most men, not just frail and excessively mannerly Polish composers, find this approach . . . unnerving.

Basically a romantic comedy centered on Sand’s unrelenting pursuit of the reclusive Chopin, the film does hint at two interesting questions: to what degree does art license its creators an existence apart from society’s rules, and what price did Sand pay for the liberty she gained by shunning convention in divorcing her rich, aristocratic husband, adopting male dress and writing for money? Much of the action takes place at the country estate of the obtuse Duchess D’Antan, who has gathered a coterie of geniuses – Liszt, Delacroix, de Musset, and Chopin (Sand invites herself) – for a fortnight of high culture. The tension between the provincial nobility who view the artists as either fashionable accessories or scandalous sinners, and the artists themselves (who profess high ideals but for the most part do in fact behave as parasites looking for a free meal) provides much of the comedy. Finally the artists stage a playlet mercilessly caricaturing their hopelessly gauche hosts, and the conflict between the traditional claims of wealth and power and the more radical Romantic stance of the artists is made explicit: when Chopin objects to the satire as ungracious, de Musset declares, "Art does *not* apologize!"

In his Minima Moralia, the noted 20th-century Marxist German philosopher and crotchety old man Theodor Adorno tells us "Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth." But in Impromptu art’s autonomy from mundane reality does not always transfer to its practitioners or devotees. The pressure to produce art for cash is an ever present theme in this film, as is the sad truth that the Romantic notion of artistic freedom was in fact a male privilege. In the bitter disappointment of Liszt’s aristocratic mistress, who sacrifices wealth and status to be the muse of a genius but instead ends up constantly pregnant and reduced to meddling in Sand’s affair in order to win herself some attention, we see how little impact that storied liberty has against the traditional imperatives of womanhood. Even Sand, whose prolific output is implicitly linked to her restless libido and disregard for scandal, must finally return to a more conventional femininity in order to finally conquer Chopin. Apparently success with even the most womanly man will require that one wear dresses and wait for him to make the first move.

However despite it’s ultimate – and very depressing – reinforcement of conventional sexual mores, there are moments enough in this film to reward repeat viewing. Chief among them is the early morning exchange between Sand and a drunken de Musset (her former lover), before he must face in a duel her most recent (and now unwanted) bedmate, her children’s doltish tutor. As he mawkishly reminisces over their affair, Sand impatiently declares, "Alfred, I was much too good for you. I spoiled you. I gave you money. I nursed you when you were sick." To which he quietly replies, "Yes . . . and then you fucked the doctor." I never thought I would find myself praising the inexplicably over-praised Mandy Patinkin, but I have to say that his performance here as the self-regarding, careless de Musset is so hilarious I wondered why Sand didn’t just stay with him.