Film Review
Those two mainstays of French cinema - the midlife crisis and a clash
of cultures - provide the starting point for this ebullient social
comedy which is likely to be one of the French film highlights of
2011. As well as being highly entertaining, the film explores
issues that are becoming ever important in France (if not the whole of
western Europe), namely racial tolerance, the value of national
identity and the growing gulf between the haves and the have
nots. It is imaginatively scripted and directed by Philippe Le
Guay who, having won widespread acclaim for his brutal social drama
Trois
huit (2001), has since contented himself with mainstream
comedies,
Le Coût de la vie (2003)
and
Du jour au lendemain
(2006).
Les Femmes du 6ème étage is by far Le Guay's most
inspired comedy to date. It is not only well-written,
well-directed and enthusiastically performed by a superb cast, but it
also provides a thoughtful commentary on our own times. The moral
of the film is perhaps a little too obvious but it makes the point
effectively - society and individuals are enriched, not impoverished,
when different cultures come together. In common with many of Le
Guay's previous films, there is also a far from subtle anti-capitalist subtext
- money may make the world go round, but it does not necessarily make
us happier.
The main treat offered by this film is a welcome return to form for the
actor Fabrice Luchini, whose anarcho-intellectual presence in French
cinema has been greatly missed in recent years. Luchini has come
to epitomise the strait-laced bourgeois intellectual who is easily led
astray into more colourful milieux to find a new lease of life.
He is therefore the natural casting choice for the film's lead character, a Gallic
Reggie Perrin who is revived by a Catalan cultural
collision. Cast as Luchini's on-screen wife for the third
time is Sandrine Kiberlain, who has the thankless task of playing the
unsympathetic missus and providing the prim and sober contrast to the
Spanish temptresses that live in the attic.
The latter includes Carmen Maura, an actress of rare talent and celluloid-scorching charisma who
has graced many a Pedro Almodóvar film, here making another
long-overdue comeback to French cinema.
Just as striking is Natalia Verbeke, who plays the
Spanish stunner who takes Luchini up the stairway to Heaven,
both literally and metaphorically.
With such a strong principal cast, the film could hardly fail to please, but add to
that a screenplay that crackles with wit and insight and the result
just has to be one of the
most enjoyable French comedies in ages.
© James Travers 2011
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Next Philippe Le Guay film:
Alceste à bicyclette (2013)
Film Synopsis
In the 1960s, Jean-Louis Joubert is a 40-something stockbroker who
lives in an upmarket Parisian apartment block with his wife
Suzanne. With their children away at boarding school, the
Jouberts live a dull, uneventful life and their marriage looks as
though it may be starting to crumble. Their new housemaid, a
Spanish immigrant named Maria, soon livens things up when she lures
Jean-Louis to the sixth floor of the building, which is where all the
maids lives. Here, Jean-Louis discovers a world he never
imagined, home to a group of uninhibited Spanish women who, despite
their straitened circumstances, are keen to hold onto their
culture. He develops a particular fascination for
Concepción, a Spanish woman of his own age with a typically
Latin temperament and an alluring savage beauty to match. When
she sees the change in her husband's mood and behaviour, Suzanne
immediately becomes suspicious and challenges him. In
retaliation, Jean-Louis decides to take a tiny little room on the sixth
floor and exchanges his humdrum middleclass existence for one that
promises freedom and the fulfilment of his pent-up desires. Or so
he thinks...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.