There is a detestable savagery to the rather odious behaviour of money man Steve who can manipulate the share price of a Factory to force its closure and a handsome profit for himself without a hint of emotion, but who gets really pissed when a pretty girl proves that she is no easy takeover and won’t put out on their first dale. He’s a powerful wheel in one of those City Financial Institutions and one day he is asked by his CEO to go back to Paris, his native city, to set up a brand new Hedge Fund that is destined to make him even richer.
Back home he employs France, a 42 year old mother, to be his housekeeper in his luxury penthouse apartment. She is also thrown into the role of Nanny one day when a woman drops off a young boy who is Steve’s son, a fact he neglected to tell France, but then again most of the time he barely remembers the boy’s existence. France is happy to be overpaid to take on these extra duties as she has recently been laid off from the job she held for 20 years back in Dunkirk her home town where her children are still be looked after by her sister. The Factory she had worked for had been forced out of business by none other than Steve.
Whilst this information is not known by either of them, they maintain a strictly defined relationship of overbearing selfish employer and humble subservient employee until one day after another pretty girl stands Steve up, he asks France to step at last minute into be his date at an important dinner, and which leads to her later getting into the bed that she makes for him every day.
And that’s when the plot goes haywire and gets a tad too far-fetched to be believable. If the truth be known I was already a wee uncomfortable with the whole concept of the filmmaker thinking that the exploitation of so many (factory workers etc) by a couple of greedy opportunists was in anyway entertaining, especially as we climb out of such a vicious recession. But then again, I personally disliked the George Clooney smash hit alleged comedy ‘Up In The Air’ as that was about a man who had mastered the craft of manipulating all the people he was firing.
Then is no moral end to the mish mash of story and the only thing approaching a happy ending is when Steve persuades an ex girlfriend to come back to him after he explained that he had cheated on with just a call girl, so that really didn’t count. He didnt just want his piece of the pie, he wanted the whole damn cake.
Particularly disappointing because this movie was the work of writer/director Cedric Kaplish whose earlier films like ‘Russian Dolls’ , L’Auberge Espagnole’ etc. I really loved, especially for the fact they were where I first came across Romain Duris, one of my very favorite French actors.
★★★★★
