If whether your morning egg is properly cooked makes or breaks your day, it’s a pretty safe bet your life isn’t exactly a nonstop thrill ride. For Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini), working in finance and living the bourgeois lifestyle in 1960s Paris has devolved into a dreary existence.
In The Women on the 6th Floor, a new French comedy opening in Atlanta Dec. 9 at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, Jean-Louis’ monotonous routine gets a jolt with the arrival of Spanish housekeeper Maria (Natalia Verbeke). At first Jean-Louis is all business, keeping the relationship on a professional tip along with his wife Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain), who’s equally constrained by societal rules.
But before long, Maria’s housekeeping prowess and friendly demeanor—and perhaps her attractiveness—start to thaw Jean-Louis’ icy façade. When he pays a visit to the building’s sixth floor and sees the maids’ subpar living quarters, he emerges a changed man. Before long, Jean-Louis is offering financial and personal assistance to the Spanish maids and mingling with them on a regular basis.
This sort of fraternization puts a strain on his marriage and proves puzzling to Jean-Louis’ upper-class cronies—not to mention his spoiled kids. But the real question is what exactly Jean-Louis’ motives are and where his relationship with the maids, and Maria in particular, will lead.
Director and co-writer Philippe Le Guay invests The Women on the 6th Floor with a low-key charm, offering a light critique of bourgeois hypocrisies that’s hardly groundbreaking but frequently amusing. Luchini is tons of fun in the lead role, and watching him transition from fuddy-dud rich investor to loose-and-carefree bachelor is a kick.
In addition to exhibiting crackerjack comic timing, Luchini showcases a range of amusingly incredulous facial expressions whenever someone—usually the Spanish maids—messes with his meticulously crafted world. And he gets bonus points for his uncanny resemblance to Mark Linn-Baker of Perfect Strangers fame.
Le Guay fleshes out the maids just enough to make them register as individuals, and the winning cast of Spanish actresses, headed by Verbeke and Almodovar vet Carmen Maura, runs with their roles, sparring memorably with Luchini. The scene in which two elder maids attempt to administer an unappetizing liquid elixir to a sickly, bedridden Jean-Louis is laugh-out-loud funny.
Unfortunately, the looming May-December romance between Jean-Louis and Maria injects an unwelcome ick factor into the proceedings, and the wrongheaded coda is a bit of a buzzkill.
Still, for the most part The Women on the 6th Floor is a fizzy, fun viewing experience, boasting culture clashes that are a heck of a lot spicier than Jean-Louis’ daily boiled egg.
Grade: B
"The Women on the 6th Floor" opens in Atlanta on Dec. 9 at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.
Follow me at http://twitter.com/ATLFilmExaminer.
Comments