watch Potiche movie 2011 online
watch Potiche movie 2011 online
The instinctive intelligence and thoughtfulness of her character balance the farce, and that link to a real emotional world is all Ozon needs to affirm that, whilst things may have changed a great deal in 33 years, in some ugly respects they look remarkably similar. It is to his credit therefore, that the high-pitched candy coating makes such consistently amusing fun of it.
Venice is this year becoming a festival notable for high drama and high camp, and so it proves again with this enjoyable, farcical French picture from the prolific master craftsman François Ozon, based on a 1980 stage play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy.
It’s a wacky 70s-period screwball comedy with a blue-chip cast and a tone which is arch, knowing and self-aware but also somehow affectionate and even, I suspect, deeply serious about the indomitable spirit of France itself, in the queenly person of Catherine Deneuve. It is a veritable palimpsest of irony levels; perhaps only a French audience can fully respond to its nods and winks.
The British film industry might produce an equivalent, perhaps, by hiring Michael Winterbottom to direct a post-modernised screen adaptation of a Brian Rix farce, using stylistic hints and surviving cast members from Carry On and Are You Being Served? – but even this wouldn’t be precisely the same thing.
Catherine Deneuve gives an unmistakably regal performance as Suzanne Bujol, a potiche, or trophy wife, to Robert (Fabrice Luchini) the wealthy, reactionary owner of an umbrella factory in 1977; he patronises his wife and is alienated from his grown-up children (played by Jérémie Renier and Judith Godrèche.)
When Robert is hospitalised after an ugly confrontation with striking workers, Suzanne has to take over the factory and to help her master the intricacies of labour politics, she calls upon an old friend and former lover, the communist mayor Maurice Babin, with whom she once enjoyed a passionate bout of al fresco sex. Babin is played by Gérard Dépardieu, here looking very portly, especially compared with the svelte Deneuve, who shows off her morning run and touch-toe exercises in a dinky little jogging outfit at the beginning of the movie. Perhaps Deneuve is too restrained to be a gay icon, but the little twinkle in her eye signals to the audience that her grandeur has to be taken with a soupçon of indulgent humour. Certainly when she wears a pinny, and unloads the dishwasher in the kitchen, as she does in one scene, the moment has something of Marie Antoinette’s milkmaid. [ watch Potiche online ]
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