Footnotes is a charming French musical about a group of striking female workers who want to save their livelihoods when the powers-that-be threaten to close the factory which makes expensive couture women’s shoes. It’s the story that makes it a delight and the characters who are the core of the plot, but it’s just that French popular music is quaintly old-fashioned and decidedly an acquired taste that may not always sit well with audiences in other countries. La La Land it is not.
Having said that, this group of very likable working class women also includes young Julie (Pauline Etienne) who, in this time of severe recession that has hit this provincial part of the country very hard, has struggled to find any work at all. Now only on her second day in her new job she finds herself witnessing a walkout after the workforce had read in a newspaper that their Paris-based boss is planning an ‘upgrade’.
They are all convinced that this is just an euphemism for closure, and naturally as this is a musical, an excuse to break into a song and dance routine on the factory floor. Only a song ago, Julie had just been celebrating her luck in landing the job, and she now worries that shehad been a little too premature doing so. There is at least some compensation for her in the shape of Samy (Olivier Chantreau) a cute truck delivery driver who obviously has the hots for the factory’s latest recruit.
When the striking workers get nowhere with the factory boss they all hop in a bus to Paris to confront Xavier ‘XL’ Laurent (Loïc Corbery) the Company’s flamboyant CEO. Oozing charm he tries to court the women and sings to them that they are mistaken and the factory will remain open. Not convinced at all, they had back home and shut-down production until XL comes to the factory himself to negotiate.
Its a stalemate until the strikers hit on a plan to call on the support of the other group of women who have a vested interest in the factory remaining in business i.e. the wealthy and stylish customers who have been wearing their couture shoes for years. They hatch a simplistic plan, which naturally works, as musicals must always have an happy ending, as this one does with well-shod women singing and dancing with delight.
This curiously entertaining movie, the debut feature from Paul Calori and Kostia Testut is said to be influenced from all the Stanley Donan Hollywood movies of the 1950’s but with its decidedly camp score, it often (totally unintentionally) seems to have been inspired by the British cult film from 2005 that spurned a Broadway musical, Kinky Boots.
