It's a French woman's world in Potiche

Comedy couple: Suzanne Pujol (Catherine Deneuve) and husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini)
10 April 2012

Any film directed by François Ozon and starring old partners Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu ought to be some fun, and this cinematic revival of a Seventies theatrical comedy is certainly that.

The nearest Ozon comparison is 2002's Eight Women, which also starred Deneuve. But this is marginally less camp and beautifully in period, right down to Farrah Fawcett hairdos. It's a bit like a Feydeau farce as Deneuve, the pliant wife of a daftly tyrannical umbrella manufacturer, becomes the mistress of all she surveys when he's taken prisoner by his striking workers. She enlists the help of a former flame (Depardieu), now the Communist mayor of the town of Sainte-Gudule. But after she has revitalised the business, her husband (Fabrice Luchini) stages a boardroom coup.

She's not going to take that now, is she?

If this is all traversed in a silly, sometimes cartoonish vein, it glories in its period style and provides the principals with a chance to shine. Deneuve's combination of dignity and a determined ordinariness is just right, while Depardieu's lovelorn political beast is equally watchable.

Hugely successful in France, it is one of those comedies everybody seems to like and gives us a shrewdly palatable view of our seemingly
long-past social and sexual attitudes.

Potiche
Cert: 15

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