At the Arthouse
Funny French feminism: Deneuve & Depardieu have a fun time in fizzy Potiche
"Potiche" movie poster
The cast of "Potiche"
A scene from "Potiche"
It’s interesting that, in the same week Elizabeth Taylor died, a film starring Catherine Deneuve is screening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as part of the Five Funny French Films weekend. In Potiche, Deneuve plays a comfortably bourgeoise woman of the late 1970s, deep into middle age and now getting plump, who has a tartly comic feminist awakening when her pig of a husband is taken hostage by striking workers at the family’s umbrella factory. (Surely a good-naturedly unsubtle nod to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Deneuve’s 1964 breakthrough role.)
You can take the comparison only so far, but Deneuve has always reminded me a little of Taylor. More than any other actresses, I believe, the two combined other-worldly beauty with real acting chops, along with the willingness to take on risky roles. But the fact that their careers also diverge so tremendously says a lot about the different film cultures of Hollywood and France.
Taylor’s last serious role was…what? 1970’s The Only Game inTown? Of course, Taylor may have simply lost interest, though she continued making television movies, etc., throughout the 1970s, and she lent some undeserved class to The Flintstones in 1994.
Deneuve, on the other hand, has never stopped working, and has never stopped stretching herself, and has somehow always managed to stay one step ahead of her looks. Now, in her late 60s, she has become a matron, rounding in the body and thickening in the face. But she’s still glorious, apparently surgery-and-botox-free, reveling in her ongoing freedom. She has her own formidable personal qualities to thank for that, of course, but she’s also fortunate to be French, where the truly adult romantic comedy is alive and well.
Not that Potiche is a romantic comedy. Directed by François Ozon, who, for reasons perhaps only he completely understands, undertook to make a film version of a 1970s theatrical farce which painted the issues of the day—feminism, gay rights, the early stages of globalization—in broad strokes. The result is a charmingly fizzy Champagne cocktail.
After the factory workers have taken her husband captive, the family turns to the town’s communist mayor, Babin, for help in negotiating. Babin, played by an absolutely enormous Gerard Depardieu, agrees to help, in part because he’s carrying a decades-old torch for Suzanne (Deneuve).
The plot advances like a stone skipping across water. Just when you think you’re settling in for a rekindled romance between the matron and the mayor, they have a falling out and emphasis shifts to Suzanne’s surprising management skills. Then to a comic confrontation with her husband (an unsubtle but amusing Fabrice Luchini), and on again to her political campaign against the mayor, who becomes her sworn enemy.
But it’s the film’s style, rather than its plot, that enchants. Ozon isn’t afraid to go over the top; his depiction of Suzanne’s early naiveté includes her talking to birds and writing poems about them in the notebook she carries everywhere. The film is just ironic enough to give their jokes some bite without making them curdle. The pleasures are visual as well, as some scenes are shot in rich colors that evoke the Technicolor films of 1950s.
I suppose Potiche is a minor effort—everyone seems to be on a lark--but still it’s very good, very grown-haup fun.
Potiche will be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday night at MFAH Brown Auditorium.
