Potiche Review

• 21st Jun 2011

Potiche is Francois Ozon’s latest offering. Over the years his films have been varied, ranging from camp with Water Drops on Burning Rocks (1999) to musical (8 Women, 2002) and the sombre (Under the Sand (2000) and Time to Leave (2005)). He is in many ways France’s answer to Pedro Almodovar, but lacks much of Almodovar’s aesthetic style; many of his films are more style over substance. Set in a northern French industrial town in 1977 Potiche is about a bad tempered and womanising industrialist who runs an umbrella factory and is facing a strike by his workforce. When all negotiations break down and he’s taken hostage, his wife Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) decides to take over the business. Because she’s just the decorative trophy housewife (a potiche is a decorative vase) this is met with derision and laughter. But her sympathy for the workforce leads to her becoming a success, sidelining her husband and eventually deciding to run as an MP – having cleaned out her home, the factory and the community, she then hopes to do the same for France. This has a contemporary message with the 2007 French presidential elections in which Segolene Royal narrowly lost against Nicolas Sarkozy; indeed the writers had based Suzanne’s character on that of Bernadette Chirac, the future wife of President Chirac.

The film is based on a 1980 French Boulevard play written by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. Adapted for the screen by Ozon, it’s very much in the manner of a typical Boulevard play and is a broad bedroom farce, typical of the French style. Ozon has chosen not to make the film more contemporaneous, and instead has set it in the late 70s following the recent counter-revolution of feminism (the original play was only set in the living room). Setting the film in 1977 gives Ozon a broader opportunity to open it up to a camp style. It opens with Suzanne jogging in the forest and talking to the animals to a background of camp 70s French pop tunes from the likes of Bacarra; these songs are used throughout the film. As a sub-plot there’s also Gerard Depardieu as the rather large town mayor who, it transpires, once had an affair with Suzanne (this is the seventh pairing of the two French legends since 1980). In order to move forward Suzanne must also make sense of her life and also challenge her one-time lover.

Fabrice Luchini plays the husband who shouts a lot and treats those around him appallingly. His is the most comic character but is typical of a noisy French play and, along with most of the rest of the cast, this can be a little annoying leaving the viewer feeling like they’re watching a play and not a film. The latest offering by Ozon is a really a vehicle for Deneuve but to a UK audience it may seem (with its 70s setting) somewhat more like a 70s British sit com. Ozon’s films are rarely as good as one expects and this one is no exception, although it’s understandable why his films would seem more attractive to a French audience.

Chris Hick