We took a flyer last night on Potiche – Trophy Wife, based on Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu being the leads. Neither are in their glorious prime but the movie was a pleasant surprise: A Labor Film! A strike! A nasty boss with his various mistresses and his wife, Deneuve, who after years of being a “trophy wife” comes into her own, incidentally revealing her own racy past, including with the now Member of Parliament, communist, Depardieu.

As only the French seem to do all this is smoothly whipped into a nice souffle in which, whatever the infidelities, the differences, the changes gone through, everyone ends up happy — with Deneuve singing “The World in Beautiful” after unseating Depardieu for his seat in Parliament, after he forced her to walk home one day in heels, after… oh well.   It’s an enjoyable couple of hours of 70s feminism, gays entering public life, and a liberal CEO beating back the outsourcing of the jobs of a labor force she has sympathetic ties to.

Too bad guys, the very beautiful daughter, Judith Godreche, is the source of the outsourcing scheme and sides with her anti-labor papa. Sigh.  Too bad ladies, Depardieu, though still his amiable, worn self, is now a mountain of a man, one to set your pulses racing only through the prism of the past.  Deneuve does a wonderful bit of wanton eye-play with a burly truck driver after Depardieu dumps her off in a fit of class consciousness.