Potiche

‘Potiche’ is, quite fit­ting­ly, a French term for a tro­phy wife. Fit­ting­ly because in many ways Cather­ine Deneuve has been a tro­phy actress – an orna­ment of beau­ty and glam­our on which to hang a film. François Ozon’s lat­est is a sto­ry cen­tred on the eman­ci­pa­tion and polit­i­cal awak­en­ing of a house­wife in 1970s France and dif­fers from 2009’s The Refuge in just about every respect. Here, we’re served a farce with copi­ous amounts of kitsch. The light­ness, how­ev­er, plays coun­ter­point to seri­ous themes which cul­mi­nate in a deeply satir­i­cal dénouement.

The funky open­ing cred­it sequence fea­tures one of France’s most icon­ic actress­es dressed in a gar­ish red track­suit jog­ging through the grounds of her idyl­lic coun­try pile acknowl­edg­ing the birds, the squir­rels, the shag­ging rab­bits, while stop­ping to jot down glib inspi­ra­tions for her poet­ry. Is this a case of Car­ry On Ozon?

Despite the mate­r­i­al trap­pings of wealth Suzanne Pujol (Deneuve) realis­es her life is emp­ty – she rue­ful­ly describes her­self as the ​‘queen of kitchen appli­ances’. Her hus­band Robert, played to snarling per­fec­tion by Fab­rice Luchi­ni, is an aggres­sive cap­i­tal­ist with a dis­mis­sive atti­tude to his employ­ees and his own family.

The union demand bet­ter pay, an eight-hour work­ing day, more hol­i­days and a prop­er toi­let – not just a ​‘Turk­ish-style’ hole in the ground. These antag­o­nisms and the sub­se­quent impasse allow Madame Pujol to become the patro­n­is­ing, but well-mean­ing, new man­ag­er. Her light touch brings about cor­dial rela­tions and improved pro­duc­tion out­put. Nat­u­ral­ly her hus­band sees this as an attempt to usurp his posi­tion as the boss of everybody.

It’s the kind of film where com­mu­nists and cap­i­tal­ists are equal tar­gets for mock­ery. Potiche isn’t Ozon reawak­en­ing the Dzi­ga Ver­tov Group. It’s not Godard’s Tout va Bien, no mat­ter the set up. There is, how­ev­er, a vague inkling that the direc­tor is point­ing to a moment in mod­ern his­to­ry where, per­haps, PR-led cam­paigns began to out­weigh seri­ous debate and pol­i­tics became a pop­u­lar­i­ty contest.

Clos­ing the film with a musi­cal num­ber in which Madame Pujol sings about becom­ing the moth­er of France is alarm­ing, and per­haps much dark­er than it may first appear. Potiche is satire mas­querad­ing as broad com­e­dy. Suzanne Pujol is anoth­er in a long line of strong, com­plex women in Ozon’s work. Gérard Depar­dieu is on fine com­ic form as the local com­mie may­or, Babin, who had a Lady Chat­ter­ley-style affair with Suzanne back in the day. Every minute of screen time they share is an utter delight, not least their dis­co scene.

But it’s Deneuve who stands in the spot­light, giv­ing a storm­ing per­for­mance as a woman whose empow­er­ment and polit­i­cal aims might not be as benign as first thought. Towards the end, a dis­grun­tled May­or Babin walks away from a tele­vi­sion crew film­ing his new polit­i­cal rival, telling them he wants no part of her ​‘per­son­al­i­ty cult’. There’s real sting to this sweet tale.