Potiche

My second native French film Potiche is a 2010 French-Belgian comedy of that veteran of feminine unpredictability on celluloid, François Ozon, based on a play of the same name by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy. The word "potiche" literally means a decorative vase whose function is to serve as an item of display of its owner's taste and social status..It is a simple, comical,  irreverent spoof on gender equality in which the respective roles of husband and wife in the late 1970s France were through a series of accidents completely reversed. At the start of the film, we find the 67-year-old but still captivating Catherine Deneuve as the stereotypical perfect middle class housewife Suzanne Pujol (described by her daughter as the "trophy wife" which she announced she has absolutely no intention of becoming)  in a red track suit running through a trail in the wood, talking to and photographing a bird, squirrels, tending flowers and writing her thoughts for poems on a pocket paper pad she carries around. Her maid having taken the day off, Suzanne prepares the breakfast for her husband, Robert Pujol ( Fabrice Luchini), a bespectacled and balding middle aged man in a tweed jacket reading  the right wing Le Figaro and complaining about the workers' perpetual strikes, worried only about production and profits and expressing the desire that they should all go to hell. In the middle of the breakfast, he receives a call from his secretary Nadège (Karin Viard) telling him that the workers are on strike at their family umbrella factories. He hurried off but still walked with straight shoulder, head held high in impatience to deal with the crisis.  When he reaches the factory, he is greeted by Nadège whose bottom as she rose upon a short wooden step to retrieve certain files on the wall shelves he deftly pinches out of force of  habit and is as deftly hit and warded off by her practised defensive hand. At the end of the film, Robert is encircled by two grandchildren, one slumped in his lap and another on his right on the family sofa in the family room, watching some indifferent afternoon TV programme on home cuisine, with his daughter at the other side of the sofa, with an apparently domesticated expression on his face, as if the words "complete resignation" to the fate of being the perfect grandfather, were written in bold capitals !

In the meantime, he has suffered a heart attack, been advised by his doctor to take a vacation to relax. In the interval, his wife takes over, successfully managing to persuade Paul Pujol, her son, studying art in university, to join when earlier he flatly rejected his father's strong recommendation that he did so, assisted by her duaghter Joëlle (Judith Godréche) who had earlier asked for her father's permission to join but was rejected by him and with not a little help from  Maurice Babin ( Gerard Depardieu), her old flame and now Socialist mayor of the small town. At the very first meeting, she made use of her status as a woman and called for comraderie and understanding previously shown by the old Pujol, the now deceased founder and succeeded in getting the workers at all the Pujol factories to back to work and promised to improve the working environment and to adjust the pay and manages to establish a cordial working atmosphere and is accordingly is well liked by every staff member, inlcluding Nadège .  She managed to increase production and even lauched a highly successful new Kadinsky line of colorful and modern looking umbrellas. In this, she had enlisted advice of her old flame Babin,  whom she first met whilst she got a flat tyre on her car near to a lake, when the former was just a passsing lorry truck driver who stopped his lorry to help her change her tyre. He is now may or of the small town and a member of the French Parlement as "deputé" of the region.

There are many humorous scenes in the film. I like in particular one in which we are shown a how, once Babin was told that Laurent might not be Robert's true son, he immediately jumped to the conclusion that Paul must be his own son, and then when he next met Paul, abruptly showered some inordinately "fatherly" admiration and attention upon him . I also like nother equally abrupt change when Suzanne she told him later in his car whilst on a trip down memory lane that the son Maurice thought was his might not be his after all but might be that of the lawyer for whom she worked when she was young and when she told him when Maurice discovered that all through the years, she had kept a locket in which there was a photo of him on one side and her own on the other and begged her to continue their broken off romantic liaison and she refused on account of her changed circumstances. The moment he heard her refusal, he instantly ordered her off his car and drove away without turning the bat of an eye although it was some dozens of kilometers away from Suzanne's home. There is Charlie Chaplinesque mime-like feel to Ozon's slapstick which is so endearing and so credible when done with the veterain actor's perfect timing . It is a sheer delight to watch such perfect but quietly effective humor. At the end of the film, we see Suzanne winning the local election as the  new "deputée" of the region against Babin! A complete turning of the tables!

The photography is subtle and natural, the humor subdued, the acting perfect. There are some old and new songs in the film which adds quite a bit charm to it including "Emmène-moi danser ce soir", Il était une fois with "Viens faire un tour sous la pluie" and Jean Ferrat's "C'est beau la vie". I'd give it a 2A!

A family photo of the Pujol family