Review of Populaire (2012) by François M — 02 Jan 2014

French romantic comedy set in the late 50's. Rose Pamphyle is a 21 year old girl, daughter of a village grumpy businessman; determined not to marry the son of the local mechanic she travels to Lysieux and applies for a job as a secretary in a small insurance firm where the boss, Louis Echard notices how fast she can type despite her lack of secretarial skills. Highly driven and emotionally damaged Louis decides to take a chance on her and trains her for typing competitions. Along the way feelings for each other start to surface interfering with the Rose's progress.

This is a movie that has it all, beautiful locations, glossy colours, well researched sceneries and costumes and a relatively rare subject: typing competitions which apparently were extremely popular at the time. It has good lead actors and a director that clearly believed in the story he was making. Some parts of the film remind us of a sports movie, not only because typing was almost a sport but also because of the strong sense of rivalry between participants. The conception of this film has a solid Hollywood influence but without the obvious clichés that can be a little annoying sometimes, so we get quality storytelling but without a moral lesson.

It is good fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it.