Movie Review: 'Potiche' fails to charm even with French stars Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu

“Potiche” starts with Catherine Deneuve in lurid red sweatpants, three ever-classy adidas stripes snaking down her legs, jogging in a park. She stops her exercise to coo at the wildlife around her, emitting oohs and aahs at deer and birds, seemingly enthralled. She finds one squirrel so captivating that she pens a short poem about it on the spot. (She would probably be in raptures on the UCLA campus.)

The film leaves you speechless and somewhat appalled only two minutes in, and you can’t help but think there had better be something very redeeming about it. Unfortunately, this redemption never arrives.

“Potiche” tells the story of Suzanne Pujol (Deneuve), the ultimate bourgeois trophy wife. She lives in a small French town with her smutty, sexist husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), who owns an umbrella factory. When Robert has a heart attack in the midst of strikes among his staff, Suzanne steps up to take charge and finds herself in control of 300 angry workers. Gerard Depardieu is appropriately if unimaginatively cast as a gruff old Communist dog, leader of the strikes and ex-lover of Suzanne’s, who becomes her unofficial adviser in managing the factory.

This should have been a frothy, charming comedy propelled by the two gems of French cinema it contains. However, this is not the case. This kitschy, retro film is instead stiff and disengaging.
The film’s main problem is character-based. Each and every one of the film’s characters is so thoroughly caricatured and stereotyped that it is virtually impossible to become emotionally invested in the film.

Suzanne’s conservative and prissy daughter Joelle (Judith Godrèche) is a perfect example. Most of her time on screen is spent tossing her rather fabulous Farrah Fawcett hair while woodenly holding a cigarette and nodding vigorously. She becomes a victim of her character’s exaggerated gestures and mannerisms, preventing a credible character from taking shape.

Suzanne maintains an unfailingly innocent and vacuous tone throughout the film, making it very hard to be sympathetic to her character. When Robert tells her, “Your job is to share my opinion,” all she can muster is a wide-eyed look of childlike dismay. Even when she becomes “empowered,” Suzanne cannot seem to wipe a permanent look of enchantment off her face or tone down her high-pitched giggles.

Suzanne’s pacifist, artistically inclined gay son and her irritable and non-supportive husband are also caricatures. Though this was on some level deliberate on the filmmakers’ part, it makes the film hard to watch. Even Depardieu’s charisma fails to come through in this charmless film.

As happy-go-lucky Suzanne skips her way from housewife to factory owner to town member of parliament, one wonders whether the director decided to actively oppose any kind of credibility. Suzanne decides to wear her best evening dress and family jewels for her first address to the rioting proletariat. Ridiculously, she manages to win over a room of angry trade unionists with gushing statements about them all being on the same side. Quite the alpha female, Suzanne goes on to represent her town, never once displaying any political beliefs or intentions.

In 1967, Deneuve famously portrayed a trophy wife in Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour.” Instead of economic empowerment, Deneuve’s ice queen character chose prostitution as her channel of revolt. In this film of fluffy conversation and stiff acting, we miss Deneuve’s nuanced and powerful performance in “Belle de Jour” and other previous films.