Potiche

Venice (In Competition) – François Ozon's campy comedy was received with rapturous applause and much laughter at Venice. It stars two of France's biggest stars – Deneuve and Depardieu – and its high-profile publicity campaign would seem to ensure national success. But, asks Emma Rowley, will Potiche travel?

François Ozon's latest offering has more in common with his musical comedy 8 Women than his last film, the melancholy Le Refuge. Potiche is a light, frothy comedy set in the late 1970s. Potiche translates as 'trophy wife' and Catherine Deneuve leads the cast as Suzane Pujol, a wealthy housewife who is marginalised in her own life by her philandering industrialist husband (“Your job is to share my opinion”), patronising daughter (“The last thing I want is to end up like you”) and distant son.

The plot kicks off in earnest when Suzanne's husband, Robert Pujol (Fabrice Luchini), is taken hostage by the workers of the umbrella factory he owns. Suzanne calls in a favour from her old lover, working-class MP and Mayor Maurice Babin (Gérard Depardieu), who ensures that Robert is freed and that negotiations begin. The traumatised man is packed off on a cruise and Suzanne is drafted in to play the role of boss in the meantime. But to everyone's surprise Suzanne has ideas and charm that revolutionise the business and set it running both profitably and fairly. That is, until Robert returns.

On the page this sounds like a sitcom set-up, and that's how it plays onscreen. The tone is of a self-consciously kitsch period piece, accented with split-screen, lavish sets and broad performances that repeatedly nudge the audience in the ribs. The film's campy opening scene sees Suzanne jogging through the forest in tracksuit and hairnet, greeting a deer and a bird (though the humping pair of rabbits she encounters get only a raised eyebrow), before pausing to compose a sentimental ditty.

But as the film progresses, Suzanne's character develops a third dimension and the plot opens up. No longer the bourgeois airhead who sports a frock and furs to meet with her striking employees against the protests of Babin (“I'm wearing my jewels to honour the workers” she protests), Suzanne decides she wants more from life and sets about pursuing it. According to Variety, Ozon said of the film, “It's the story of a woman's emancipation... Women's situation has changed but not so much. Women are not paid the same as men for the same job and there's still a lot of machismo.” But with this in mind, it's pretty perplexing that he chose a farce of this nature, with characters so arch and unlifelike, and bed-hopping a recurring theme, to make such a point.

The film derives from the play of the same name by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy, but Ozon himself adapted and modernised it. Some of the additions are cleverly done. At one stage Robert Pujol tells his workers that if they want to earn more, they should work more, a line that was also one of Sarkozy's campaigning slogans. But most of humour is, well, not all that funny. When the workers are protesting, Suzanne braces herself, saying, “When this happened to Marie Antoinette, she didn't lose her head.” Her daughter replies, “She did eventually, mother” – an exchange that was greeted with wild laughter and a smattering of applause in my screening – strange for such a hoary old gag.

Deneuve gives a winningly charismatic performance and her time with Depardieu is romantically-charged and charming, particularly a scene in which the pair take to the dancefloor for a choreographed disco routine. But Potiche remains something of an oddity, neither one thing nor the other, except of course a fabulously fun vehicle for Deneuve's never-diminishing talents. It's a film for Ozon fans and for lovers of French culture, but it seems destined to remain in this niche.

Rating on a scale of 5 discreet trysts: 3.5

Release date: France = 10 December 2010, UK & USA = TBC
Directed by: François Ozon
Screenplay by: François Ozon, adapted from the play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Jérémie Renier, Judith Godrèche, Karin Viard, Évelyne Dandry
Rating: TBC
Running time: 103 minutes

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