La Dilettante (1999) - film review

On the spur of the moment, Pierette Dumortier abandons her husband and her comfortable middle-class life in Switzerland and takes the train to Paris.  She has no job, no money, so her first port of call is her son, who works in a factory and lives in a minuscule appartment. She goes to a nearby school to enquire about a clerical job but is given a teaching post, even though she has no qualifications.  When she visits her daughter, who is living with her wealthy step-mother, Pierette meets and falls in love – with a Catholic priest.  After she loses her teaching job, she works for a while in a bar, before ending up working for an unscrupulous antiques dealer...

One of the most highly rated French films of 1999, La Dilettante is an unusual bitter-sweet comedy which is as much a reflection of life in France in the early 1990s as it is a study of one woman who is incapable of being tied down in one place for more than five minutes – the eponymous dilettante.

The film stars Catherine Frot, a talented French actress who gives one of her best performances as the charming and elusive Pierette Dumortier.  Hers is an extraordinary character - totally disarming in her naïve insouchiance, yet also annoying in her apparent superficiality.  This explains why the other characters in the film either love her or loathe her – she is the embodiment of the independent woman, living for the present, yet leading a charmed life which propels her from one improable situation to another.  Only once in the film does the character breakdown and protest against what fate has dealt her -  for the rest, she is content to take things as they come. Catherine Frot’s immense contribution to the film is to make this somewhat artificial character appear totally believable and, ultimately, sympathetic.

The film also benefits from a well-written script, which contains so many quotable lines (most famously: "I have opted to stay indefinitely in the temporary") and some brilliantly tongue-in-cheek comedy.  Some times the humour is intentionally funny, such as the scene where Pierette is confessing to a Catholic priest that she is madly in love with another priest, but mostly the comedy is played down, as you would expect for an intelligent French comedy.

There are some pleasing moments of satire – which takes in most of the major institutions in France, including the schools, the Church and the legal system.  Much of the humour seems to be made at the expense of the Bourgeoisie who, as ever, are portrayed as the villains of the piece.  This is shameless stereotyping but it does emphasise the difference between Pierette, who earns her place in the middle class because of her charm, good fortune and unfaltering ingenuousness, and others of her social class, who have to resort to manipulation and deceit to preserve their position in society.  The life of the dilettante has much to commend it, as indeed does this film.

© James Travers 2001

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