Review of Potiche (1983) by Mike M — 19 Jun 2011

Like Ozon's similaly theatrical "Water Drops on Burning Rocks" (from which it borrows its quadrangular plotting and retro styling) and "8 Women" (where Ozon and Deneuve first collaborated), this is une espece de candy-floss, served up between gaudy, flared quotation marks, although you may sense a little more substance this time round: in its own light-footed way, it is as much a treatise on the social, political and domestic turbulence of the 1970s as something like "The Baader-Meinhof Complex".

.. Deneuve is evidently having the most fun she's had on screen for years, and the film is fun, too, albeit of a somewhat limited kind, barely meant at the point of production, and dissipating quickly thereafter.

Tonally, "Potiche" shares something with the early episodes of "Glee", where the creators didn't know whether they wanted to praise their characters for their idiosyncrasies, or poke fun at them (the poster image subscribes to this, too, appearing to offer up Mme Deneuve as a Gallic Sue Sylvester); only belatedly, when Ozon decides he rather likes these people, does "Potiche" become properly cheering, but at no point does the film attain the sincerity of, say, the Rosamund Pike subplot in "Made in Dagenham".

(Even the recent Depardieu starrer "Mammuth", itself far from a shy or retiring work, proved more heartfelt on the plight of the humble French laborer; Ozon's interest resides chiefly in the fabulousness of the diva who transcends the factory floor.

) It grew on me, but more so than a fondness for the stars, you will need a tolerance for frenetic, high-strung camp; for much of "Potiche", I found myself in more or less the same position as Karin Viard's harassed secretary - a close rival to "Mad Men"'s Joan Holloway in her ability to fill out a period sweater - whose reaction to the factory's new range of rainbow-coloured brollies is the telling "A bit loud, no?".