Potiche (2010) - film review

In 1977, Robert Pujol is the owner of an umbrella factory, which he runs with an iron hand.  At home, he treats his wife Suzanne and their grown-up children, Joëlle and Laurent, in the same despotic manner as his unfortunate employees.  When a strike is declared, Robert falls ill and his wife has to wade into the breach.  As she takes over the running of the factory, Suzanne soon proves that she is better suited for the job than her husband.  When Robert returns after a rest cure, life for the Pujols suddenly becomes very complicated...

After a series of tepid and frankly bizarre excursions into the realms of self-indulgent whimsy (Angel, Ricky, Le Refuge), director François Ozon shows a magnificent return to form with his latest comedy extravaganza, Potiche.  Not only is this Ozon’s funniest film to date, it is also his most pertinent and offers a timely and incisive commentary on gender politics today.  The film is loosely based on a hit stage play of the same title by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy, which was first performed in 1980 with Jacqueline Maillan in the lead role.  Ozon reworks the play into a 1970s-era social farce which superficially resembles a pro-feminist satire, but which in fact is a subtle and complex study in identity, in keeping with the bulk of the director’s oeuvre to date.  The film is not only highly entertaining, it is also extremely thought-provoking and tackles an important subject which is virtually overlooked in today’s cinema, namely the role of men and women in modern society.

Headlining Ozon’s most prestigious cast list to date are Catherine Deneuve and Depardieu, their seventh screen collaboration in thirty years (and neither looks any the worse for wear).  The on-screen magic is still there, and even though Depardieu is cast in one of his more macho roles, Deneuve still manages to look as though she is the one with the Y chromosome, even if outwardly she resembles the acme of grace and femininity.  The part of Suzanne Pujol is a gift for Deneuve, allowing her to do what she does best, playing a strong female character with considerable comic verve, wiping the floor with her male co-stars as she does so.  Although her portrayal here does bring to mind those ghastly caricatures of iron-willed women that were endemic in sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s (doubtless influenced by a certain British Prime Minister of the time), there is also a reality and human side to her character, something that is perhaps lacking in most of the other protagonists.  Whilst it is a treat to sit back and watch an ensemble that includes such talented performers as Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche, Jérémie Renier and Sergi López (all as excellent as ever), the sheer abundance of star power in this film is an unnecessary distraction that does weaken its message, but not its entertainment value.  

It is particularly gratifying to see François Ozon return to the gloriously über-kitsch stylisation of his early films, Sitcom (1998), Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (2000) and 8 femmes (2002).  What made Ozon such an interesting and likeable director in his early years was the almost surreal theatricality of his mise-en-scène, which somehow rendered his explorations of identity both intensely provocative and deeply sinister.  In Potiche, Ozon ups the kitsch quotient to astronomical proportions and, as you watch it, you really do feel as though you have been sent back to the late 1970s - to the time when glamour troopers like Farrah Fawcett and Stefanie Powers struck their blow for female equality, unwittingly enacting every last adolescent male fantasy as they did so.  Those were the days...

Like the two directors who appear to have had the greatest influence on him - Douglas Sirk and Rainer Fassbinder - Ozon employs a style of cinema that is trashy, démodé and easily open to ridicule, so that he can sneakily make a damning critique of contemporary society without anyone (other than the enlightened minority) noticing.  You have to be either French or up to date with French current affairs to catch the anachronistic little in-jokes which give the film its satirical punch.   Deneuve’s character was apparently inspired by Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate in the 2007 French Presidential election, whilst Fabrice Luchini’s character clearly owes something to alpha male Nicolas Sarkozy (even quoting his tough love, macho posturing rhetoric).  Potiche may look like an old-fashioned battle of the sexes comedy that has just popped out of a 1970s time-warp but it is actually a film that is highly relevant for our time.  It prompts us to reflect on what sexual equality really means, whether it can ever be attained, and indeed whether it is even desirable.  Do we really want a world where women feel they have to behave like men all the time, and where men are left feeling they have been totally usurped and emasculated?  Just what are the appropriate gender roles for the new millennium?   François Ozon leaves us with much food for thought, but only after we have finished laughing our guts out.

© James Travers 2011


Francois Ozon’s Potiche (aka Trophy Wife) is set in a French provincial town in 1977, the year in which Ozon was just ten years old.  To make this film seems important for the director to allow him to come to terms with the results of his dedication to cinema after twenty years of a successful career.  It is Ozon’s adieu to French cinema as an artform which addressing life in its entirety, not just particular problems of life.  Ozon was never himself part of that kind of cinema:  he was too young when it was at its peak and he needed to resolve for himself in his films a number of specific existential problems.  It was also very difficult for the director to overcome the commercial aspects of cinema.  Making Potiche was for Ozon even more important than overcoming the fact that he wasn’t able to make this kind of film (addressing life in its wholeness) before. Potiche is also Ozon’s nostalgic farewell to artistic cinema with political awareness (not just a political film).  

In a way, as a director and a thinker, Ozon was always a potiche of European cinema.  He never addressed life in a wholeness that could include a political aspect with its existentialist naturalism.  Only now, with this film of 2010, Ozon is psychologically and artistically strong enough to overcome these limitations and become the real (albeit nostalgic) inheritor of a kind of cinema that has almost ceased to exist - Godard and Resnais are the last living giants of that kind of cinematic art.  Ozon’s film gives today’s filmgoers a chance to appreciate a kind of cinema that is more concerned with life and its political concerns than its prevailing commercial counterpart.

© Victor Enyutin (Seattle, US) 2011

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