Looking back in an ironic way to the era of “Norma Rae” and “An Unmarried Woman,” the new French comedy “Potiche” is a women’s lib picture from the days when they called it women’s lib.
It’s set in 1977, in other words. The word “potiche” apparently is French slang for “trophy wife,” and that term describes the impeccable Suzanne Pujol (Catherine Deneuve). She inherited an umbrella factory, which her awful husband (Fabrice Luchini) has run for decades, when he’s not having affairs.
We first meet Suzanne jogging through the woods, where she resembles a Disney cartoon character come to life. Even the little forest creatures respond to her blond glow.
The movie’s main source of fun is watching this pampered princess stretch into her full powers at the umbrella factory.
I don’t know the vintage of the stage play that “Potiche” is based on, but it could easily be something from the 1970s. Director Francois Ozon, whose oddball filmography includes the campy “8 Women” and the sultry “Swimming Pool,” seems to be kidding the material but thoroughly enjoying its slightly dated feel.
He’s certainly gone out of his way to play up the crazy 1970s decor and costuming; this movie is as convincing a re-creation of ’70s cinema as anything in “Grindhouse.”
Nobody wears costumes better than Catherine Deneuve, that icon of international movies. She glides through this film’s plotline in a variety of overdone outfits, but her best costume is the daffy smile she wears whether she’s running a boardroom meeting or flirting with a truck driver.
(One of Deneuve’s most famous movies is “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” but I’m not sure whether the umbrella connection is deliberate or a pleasant connection to movie history.)
Ozon has a great cast: Luchini and Gerard Depardieu (as a Communist workers organizer) are titans of French masculinity, Judith Godreche and Jeremie Renier are rising young stars (they both have Farrah Fawcett hair in this one), and Karin Viard is especially sly as Luchini’s long-suffering secretary.
“Potiche” is slightly more fun to describe than it actually is to watch, maybe because Ozon’s viewpoint on all this feels so tongue-in-cheek. Even with that caveat, this is a zany throwback.
“Potiche” (3 stars)
In 1977, a trophy wife (Catherine Deneuve) decides to take over her husband’s factory in a wacky comedy that takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the ’70s-era women’s lib picture. It’s not quite as fun as it should be, but director Francois Ozon has a great cast that includes Gerard Depardieu and Fabrice Luchini. In French, with English subtitles.
Rated: R for subject matter
Showing: Guild 45th.
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