Potiche

Director: François Ozon
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu and Fabrice Luchini
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 103 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Brief sex scenes

Potiche is the kind of comedy with serious undertones that the French do so well (with some Gallic behaviour, especially in relationships, that other cultures are more reticent about).

Director Francois Ozon has made some serious films in his time (Under the Sand, The Swimming Pool, Time to Leave about a man dying with HIV), but can let his hair down too. He made the upstairs-downstairs musical 8 Women. He is back with his main star of that film, Catherine Deneuve who, almost fifty years after her movie debut, is still headlining her films, making two films a year at least. Plenty of life – and, though more matronly, a striking and beautiful screen presence. So, that is one reason for seeing Potiche.

Another is her co-star, Gerard Depardieu who elicits quite a different vocabulary to describe his appearance but he is still making about three films a year and proving what a commanding presence he has on screen. And, there is another reason, the not so well-known but very versatile French actor, Fabrice Lucchini, who tends to play the straight man in comedies, with a talent for double takes as well as uncomprehending doubt.

The film is set in 1977 at a time when French industry needed something of a worker’s revolution. Lucchini runs an umbrella factory which his wife Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) inherited from her father, a man beloved by his workers. Not so Lucchini who presents himself as a picture of Parisian respectability but who is arrogantly dismissive of his workers (but not his personal assistant with whom he is having an affair). He has a son who prefers art to factory work and a daughter who takes after her father in his fascist attitudes but whose marriage is on the rocks. When the workers abduct the boss, Suzanne confronts Maurice (with whom she has something of a past) and takes over management. With aplomb and success.

Her husband finds this intolerable and manoeuvres to have her ousted. Son and daughter have to take sides. So liberating has the experience been for Suzanne that she decides to stand for political office against Maurice, with her son as campaign manager and her husband’s assistant definitely on her side and working for her. While the screenplay is quite serious about Suzanne and her new lease of life, her stands against her husband and her confrontations with Maurice, there is also a light touch, moments of froth, and enjoyment of feminist victories – and it all ends with song.
C’est la vie!