Potiche

I do wish they'd stop bigging up films that are quite nice on their own terms, but hardly classics. The French farce Potiche is the latest in a long line of four and five-star blockbusters that possibly deserve 2.5 and would probably get a better reaction from punters like me if it did. Mind you, I expected better from director Françoiz Ozon, whose 5x2 of 2004 was an excellent exposition of what even then wasa potentially cliched look at the decline of a relationship told backwards.
In Potiche, set in the 1970s, a time of industrial turmoil in France as here, Catherine Deneuve plays Suzanne Pujol, the initially submissive, home-making wife of reactionary umbrella factory boss Robert (Fabrice Luchini) – she is his 'potiche' or trophy wife. The workers go on strike for, among other things, toilets with seats (fair enough), and take Robert hostage. Suzanne enlists the help of the local mayor, a communist (and former beau, it turns out) called Maurice Babin, played by the remarkably corpulent Gérard Depardieu, who still sports that distinctive page-boy haircut, and Robert is freed. While he recovers, Suzanne takes over negotiations with the workers and things inevitably take a turn for the better given her more empathetic, some might say maternal attitudes. With her vastly different children and her husband's secretary also involved, cue a comedy of sex and class war and unexpected revelations - none of which, of course, I shall reveal here.
The film earnestly sets its stall out in the 70s, with opening credit fonts straight out of The Brady Bunch, funny bright wallpaper patterns (ho ho) and people smoking inappropriately around children, near food and so on. It does what it does well and the acting is uniformly excellent, bar Luchini who mugs up in true farceur fashion and comes across as out of sync with all around him.
Therein lies the trouble, I think. The film doesn't really know whether it's farce, satire or women's movie, and doesn't actually fit well into any category. Full-out laughs are few, which is not to say there aren't some very funny lines. The revelations are interesting without making you think 'ah, now I understand why...'. And the empowerment of Madame Pujol just doesn't ring true for me, with a bizarre ending that ends up with something quite surreal that doesnt' quite fit in with it all.
It's an interesting film, but not the masterpiece so many have suggested. I much preferred The Messenger, a film I saw at the same arena last week, and which I wholeheartedly recommend. See you next time.