Potiche (***1/4)

“Trophy housewife” is how the title gets translated in the English subtitles of this breezy French import. Catherine Deneuve, who’s won some trophies of her own, plays the title role. As the wife of a 1970s umbrella magnate, she’s learned to live with being ignored, condescended to, and probably cheated on by her wealthy spouse (Fabrice Luchini). Unfortunately for him, while she tolerates his ill treatment, his factory employees won’t, and their threats to strike will have unexpected repercussions on his family, which includes a left-leaning son who sympathizes the workers and a right-leaning daughter who doesn’t. Turns out, the housewife is the only one who can step in and make peace.

This of course would be a creaky storyline today, but director and screenwriter François Ozon has kept the setting of the play he’s adapted, and he’s also filmed it in a style that will remind viewers of a time long ago, when feminism still seemed new, young women had Farrah Fawcett haircuts, and communist mayors of small French cities were, presumably, common. He’s co-opted the bright look of 1970s television, utilizing a groovy font for the credits, a period-sounding score (reminding me of Marvin Hamlisch’s in The Informant!), and even touches like a split-screen scene.

Ozon’s movie occupies the territory between homage and parody, not unlike his 8 Women, which also featured Deneuve. Thus, while well-plotted and relatively realistic, it’s also whimsical and comic in its retro stylings and acting. The communist mayor, by the way, is played by Gerard Dépardieu, the onetime leading man who’s made a Brandoesque transformation, weight wise. The potiche turns out to have a past. Deneuve fell for Dépardieu 30 years ago in The Last Metro, but here, she turns him down. Complications ensue, all in good fun.

IMDB link

viewed 4/23/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 4/24/11

Extract (***1/4)

This is the third film from Beavis and Butthead/King of the Hill creator Mike Judge. Office Space, his first, flopped at the box office but became a cult classic via cable and video, while Idiocracy barely even received a theatrical release, but wasn’t bad. Extract sort of inverts the viewpoint of Office Space, in which underutilized white-collar workers rage against dull or foolish middle management types. Here a factory owner (Jason Bateman) is the mild-mannered hero, with a motley assortment of blue-collar types nursing petty gripes and falsely accusing the new guy, a Latino, of stealing. Frustrated by supervising this bunch and by a nearly sexless marriage, he longs to find a buyer for his business and cash out.

Add in a pretty swindler (Mila Kunis), a flaky bartender (Ben Affleck), a wifty giglo, and an assembly-line mishap and you have most of the comedic ingredients. It has a lot of the feel of Office Space in being dense with unpredictable plotting, which I won’t give away, and memorable characters. I haven’t even mentioned JK Simmons as Bateman’s second in command, who refers to most of the employees as “Dingus,” Kristen Wiig as his wife, and a creepy Gene Simmons (of KISS) as a sleazy lawyer. As with Judge’s other two films, it’s these supporting characters that make the film distinctive. That’s not to say Bateman is dull, just that he’s playing the normal character that keeps the movie from getting too silly.

There’s something about all three of Judge’s movies that makes me want to watch them again, and I never watch movies again. They’re sort of easy to watch. I wouldn’t say any is quite hilarious, but each of them features a bunch of set pieces that continue to amuse even after the movie is over. The running subplot with an unctuously annoying neighbor is one such for me, the character being a less-original counterpart to oily boss Bill Lumberg in Office Space. I’d rank this just behind Office Space overall, too. But I bet if if this comes on cable one day, and I turn it on in the middle, I’ll probably sit down and watch a few scenes and not even worry that I missed the beginning.

IMDB link

viewed 9/05/09 at AMC Loew’s Cherry Hill and reviewed 9/06/09

Kinky Boots (***)

The predictably enjoyable story of the drag queen (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who resuscitates a shoe factory in working-class Northampton.

Kinky Boots falls into what seems to be a particularly English subgenre about groups of working-class folks who get involved with some vaguely prurient activities, in this case making boots for drag queens. It’s not as funny as The Full Monty, and not quite as touching as Calendar Girls, but it should appeal to the same audience. (Among non-documentaries, it had the second highest audience rating at the recent Philadelphia Film Festival.) Joel Edgerton is the new owner of his family’s financially strapped shoe factory who finds an unlikely savior called Lola, or Simon. Lola is played by the ever-versatile Chiwetel Ejiofor, who has, in the space of under four years, convincing essayed an illegal Nigerian immigrant in Dirty Pretty Things, a space villain in Serenity, a New York cop in Inside Man, and a London drag queen here. He sings well, too, in the several brief musical numbers, which include, of course, both “Whatever Lola Wants” and Kirsty MacColl’s “In These Shoes.” This movie was exactly what I thought it would be, the ending entirely clear within 15 minutes, but that was okay.

IMDb link

posted 9/3/13

Bubble (***)

Steven Soderbergh’s 72-minute film is a quiet-but-not-depressing quasi-mystery involving three doll-factory workers in rural Ohio.

Director Steven Soderbergh has gone back and forth between big-budget Hollywood films like Erin Brokovich, Traffic, and Ocean’s Eleven and lower-profile, experimental efforts like Full Frontal. The shot-on-digital-video Bubble has earned some attention by being the first film simultaneously released on DVD, in theaters, and cable TV. (It aired on HDNet, a network not carried by Comcast.) Stylistically, it’s also unusual. Virtually all of the actors are residents of the Ohio town where the movie was filmed. With its realistically undramatic dialogue (much of it improvised), drab rural setting, and sparse score, you could be forgiven for mistaking this as a documentary at first. The main characters—a young guy, his older female friend, and their new coworker, a young single mom—work at a doll factory. It was scripted by Coleman Hough, who wrote Full Frontal, but the working-class folks in this film are as far removed from the Hollywood types of that movie as Soderbergh’s calm camera work is from the frenetic Full Frontal. There is one surprising thing that happens halfway through the 72-minute film, but twists and turns aren’t the reason to watch. It’s more like a little look into the lives of people who aren’t usually the subjects of those big-budget spectaculars.

IMDb link

posted 9/17/13