There's an old and all-too-true joke that asks: if the French are funny, and sex is funny, why are French sex comedies never funny? Maybe it's a question of translation. Happily, François Ozon's latest, a sublimely goofy (and apparently loose) adaptation of the popular (in France) 1970s play Potiche, blasts that rule right out of the water. That it does so under the direction of a man better known for serious arthouse fare like Under the Sand and while starring two of France's most awards-encrusted stars -- neither of whom have ever been known for bringing the silly -- is all the more enjoyably unexpected.
Wearing a wide, bright smile and dressed to the nines at all times (except when trundling around the grounds in a bright red tracksuit), Catherine Deneuve plays Suzanne, a housewife married to the work-obsessed manager of an umbrella factory in a small French town. Though at first Suzanne seems the picture of happiness, whether writing her little poems about nature in a small notebook or blowing kisses to woodland creatures (there's a strong scent of mock-Disney froth here), not only after the story begins she has reached the end of her tether. After being berated by her husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini, a perfectly pop-eyed and clownish villain) for not playing the role of submissive trophy housewife to perfection, even as he carouses late into the evening with floozies at the local discotheque, Suzanne starts getting ideas.
When Robert is taken hostage by workers striking against his arbitrarily harsh dicta, and then hospitalized, Suzanne takes the opportunity to become something more than a trophy. (The film's title comes from the word for a decorative vase of little use or value that sits unused on a shelf; it's also been used to describe the decorative wives of some politicians.) She not only gets her 9-to-5 moment stepping into the control of the factory, but she also manages to rekindle a relationship with Maurice (Gerard Depardieu, taking it easy but still dominating the screen), a local Communist politician who's the sworn enemy of the capitalist exploiter Robert and also just so happens to be an old flame of Suzanne's from her youth. An illegitimate child, secrets about a risqué past, and generous amounts of misunderstandings and sputtering indignation -- everything grounded by the easygoing Deneueve and Depardieu, who play it straight as possible -- keep the film's farcical momentum going.
Smartly, Ozon didn't update the play's setting, keeping it firmly locked into a 1977 mindset, which makes it not only more believable for Suzanne's mild attempt at female liberation to so scandalize her husband, but also allows the filmmaker to play with some truly fantastic period detail. The film is stylized to the hilt, brimming over with eye-popping colors (particularly in the umbrella factory, which has a Willy Wonka vibe to it) and painstakingly choreographed outfits. It has the bordering-on-unhinged feel of a giddy Technicolor musical of decades ago, and that's even before Suzanne bursts into song -- which she does a couple times, just for kicks.
Potiche may not be a sex farce, per se, as there is in fact no scene where people dash from one bedroom to another, trying to separate their desired lover from a web of semi-comical misunderstandings, and it's all the more enjoyable for not being so. Ozon plays everything broad but not imbecilic, letting some plot strands dangle tantalizingly just out of reach and even inserting some edged points about female liberation. He even manages to gild nearly every inch of his film in high-Seventies kitsch without making it oppressive. The film is light as can be, an escapist frolic that proves all over again how lucky filmgoers are to have the likes of Catherine Deneuve still out there taking risks and running with them.
