This mainstream comedy about Nathalie (Karin Viard), a Parisienne of a certain age with anger issues, looks very much – particularly when viewed through an Anglo-American lens – like something that was made before the #MeToo movement kicked off. The fact that it was written and directed by men (brothers Stéphane Foenkinos and David Foenkinos), wouldn’t have seemed like a big deal a year ago, when most viewers could probably agree that it offers a recognisable portrait of female rage that’s just a few shades gentler, fluffier and more romcomic than Paul Verhoeven’s Elle.
These days, however, the Foenkinos’ gender feels more problematic, especially because they take evident delight in making Nathalie a total bitch, and target most of her manipulative firepower and passive-aggressive spite in the direction of other women. Particularly in the first half, before a near tragedy teaches her to consider the error of her ways.
Hurt by a relatively recent divorce from Jean-Pierre (Thibault de Montalembert), who has gallingly married a younger woman (Marie-Julie Baup), Nathalie feels threatened by and competitive with almost every other woman she meets. This is particularly true of a smart young colleague at work – her happily married best friend (Anne Dorval) – and even of her own 18-year-old daughter, Mathilde, an aspiring ballerina. (Dara Tombroff, who plays Mathilde, dances for the Paris Opera and does all her own plies and pirouettes here.) Nathalie’s sharp-tongued manners and uncontrollable jealousy of other women even means – zut alors! – she blows a chance of love with divorced middle-aged hottie (Bruno Todeschini) when she thinks he is ogling Mathilde.
Viard, a gifted, protean actor who was terrific in the cop-drama Polisse and has done excellent work in dozens of French films, has incisive comic timing and also shows us a likable fragility beneath her character’s bitterness. But these days there is something tone deaf about the film’s failure to see anything wrong with an essentially patriarchal society that pits women against other women via countless subtle strategies, starting with making physical appearance such a priority for success. Implicitly, Nathalie’s biggest reward for changing is the chance to get a new boyfriend, and repairing the broken relationships with the women around her is merely the warm up to that headline achievement.
