Le donne del 6º piano

Thank goodness I got tired of the trash that Hollywood tips out like churned mince through a mincer and decided to begin watching foreign films!

French movies, in particular, seem to have a knack for producing a love story that doesn't leave me puking with either boredom or the sheer stupidity and bad acting.

This is one such little gem. Delightful, understated, charming. When a Spanish maid moves to France she takes a job with a wealthy businessman and his detached wife. As the wife listens more and more to her malicious, gossipy society friends, she becomes suspicious of her husband having an affair.

Her husband certainly is up to many things, but he's a lovely man, played delightfully, and he's falling in love alright... with a whole new way of life.

I enjoyed every minute of this!

The nice thing about "The Women on the 6th Floor" is that it stops itself just short of being an important film with a big statement. I can't help but think of it as a lighter cousin to "The Help"; while "The Help" shoved its self-righteous social consciousness right into the viewer's face, this French comedy chooses to remain a silly romantic comedy and keep the social commentary as subtext. The wealthy protagonist isn't out to change world orders, and he really isn't all that progressive (like Emma Stone's character in The Help), he just wants to get into the Spanish maid's pants. That means the movie got a lot less attention (and would have even if we eliminated the element of Americans' strange refusal to read subtitles) but it's a lot more entertaining, a lot less irritating, and not any more shallow as far as social commentary goes.

It isn't quite a great film. It's very naive, very unrealistic, and French cinema buffs may point out that it's a throwback to films made over half a century ago. The Spanish characters are extremely stereotypical, and the romance makes less and less sense as the film goes on, most jarringly in the incredibly silly, entirely unconvincing, saccharine ending, which almost ruined the whole thing for me. Nevertheless, it's funny and enjoyable throughout, Fabrice Luchini is superb in the lead, and all the supporting characters (even the stereotypical maids) are wonderfully crafted. And interestingly, it's the ignoble motivation of the protagonist that makes him much more compelling than Emma Stone in "The Help"; as unrealistic as the story is, the character is quite real, and makes for a delightful comedic protagonist, which in turns leads to a delightful little movie.

A great movie, with wonderful actress and actor, soft, funny, intelligent and deeper as it seems apparently. If you pay attention the flick will let you think upon many things and, in any case, you will leave the theater in a good and serene mood not only in your mind, but also in your heart. Very refreshing!!! Luchini is excellent (as always) in his wonderful character. He recognize the opportunity to change his life and he seize it on. Today maybe it is hard to imagine that a rich man can show that kind of interest for people of a such different social condition. But in the Sixties sometimes that could happen, the social dehumanization was not so advanced like today, in spite of all the contradictions of those years, which are very well represented. Very good also Kiberlain as his wife. She is perfect in her attitude as snooty new rich. The whole cast of the movie and especially the Spanish women are simply great: they show how a change was urgently requested, at that time... and let us understand, today also!

A great review by Robert Beames (coulden't have done it better myself!!) It has been given the more toner-friendly English language title of Service Entrance, but comic French drama Les Femmes Du 6eme Etage translates literally as The Women on the 6th Floor. Shown out of competition in Berlin, the film was very warmly received thanks in part to the performances of its sweet and amiable leading man, Fabrice Luchini, and its beautiful Spanish leading lady played by Natalia Verbeke. These actors combine with the film's leisurely pacing and entertaining scenario to ensure that it is a winsome and inoffensive crowd-pleaser.

The film, set in the 1960s, follows a wealthy, middle-aged Parisian stockbroker named Jean-Louis (Luchini) whose long-standing maid quits following a row with his demanding wife Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain). Unable to clean up after themselves, the couple desperately need a new maid. But when Suzanne's high society friends insist French maids aren't the done thing anymore, she enlists the help of Maria (Natalia Verbeke), a feisty, young Spanish immigrant. Jean-Louis forms an instant and obsessive attraction to her and to all things Spanish, soon striking up unlikely friendships with all the Spanish ladies who live in the servant's quarters above his home – a place he knows nothing about despite living in the building his entire life. Worlds collide and good-natured japes ensue as he helps each lady adjust to life in France whilst himself inheriting a new found love of life.

I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that both the more shamelessly enjoyable films I've seen here up to now have been broad comedies about cultural difference and histories of mass immigration – with Almanya looking at German-Turks and Service Entrance exploring the relationship, and the comedy that comes of misunderstanding, between the French and their Spanish workforce. Immigration is still a political hot potato issue in these countries, as it remains in much of Europe, and maybe light-hearted comedy is seen as the best way to preach tolerance, reaching a bigger audience than earnest polemic. In mocking bigotry and by setting it in the past (as an old fashioned attitude) perhaps it is felt that people might be less inclined to identify with those views.

In any case both films are funny and have their hearts firmly in the right place. This French offering is gentler and less ballsy than it's Turkish-German counterpart, but no less enjoyable. The character of Jean-Louis is incredibly easy to like, being child-like in his enthusiasm for his new-found interest in Spain. The character of Suzanne is also refreshingly balanced and nuanced. She'd usually be a two-dimensional figure we would be encouraged to dislike in order to make it permissible for Jean-Louis to consider romance with Maria and yet the film doesn't go down that route: she can be annoying and insensitive but she isn't a nasty person. Maria and the other Spanish ladies are also a joy to watch as they interact with one another and fuss over cheerful little Jean-Louis.

Service Entrance is the filmic equivalent of a soufflé and certainly not a tough watch typical of the standard festival fare. Indeed it falls into the dubious realm of the "feel good" movie. But sandwiched, as it is here, between two-hour long Shakespeare adaptations, Bela Tarr movies, Argentinian slow cinema and films about nuclear disasters, it is exactly the kind of film you need to see in order to keep sane. It is difficult to say whether wider criticism in France will be anything like as positive when removed from this context on theatrical release, but here it offered exactly what was needed and nobody appreciated that more than I.

This is a pure delight. The director, Philippe Le Guay, has the perfect touch, never too light, never too heavy. And he is supported in this delicate balancing act by a marvellous cast, whose timing, tone and style are all perfectly attuned. The central performance in the film is given by the French comic actor Fabrice Luchini, an intelligent simpleton, a naïve bourgeois who has unexpectedly been let loose on Life. Luchini is a true marvel, a world class talent at understated comedy. He has at times the innocent puzzlement of silent comedian Harry Langdon come over his face, a kind of infantile bewilderment, but he is equally capable of snarling arrogantly as a domineering bourgeois buffoon and demanding that his boiled egg must boil for precisely three and a half minutes. He even admits that if he gets the correctly prepared egg in the morning, the rest of his day is glorious, but if he gets an egg which is too hard, his day is ruined. The task set to his maid is therefore going to determine his every day's mood! Luchini owns a large house in Paris (apparently, from what I could glimpse of a park scene, intended to be within walking distance of the quiet and sleepy Parc Monceau). He has inherited it and a prosperous brokerage and investment management business from his father. The film is set in 1962. Every day he goes to work to advise rich people how to invest their money. One of his clients is a glamorous rich widow, played unexpectedly in a cameo performance by the dazzler Audrey Fleurot from the police series ENGRENAGES (SPIRAL, 2005 onwards). Some wonderful laughs come from this association. Fleurot is reputed to be a man-eater, and Luchini's wife is worried that she will steal him from her, but little does she realize that he has barely noticed Fleurot (if you can imagine anyone not noticing Fleurot, which I cannot). This is a mere side event to the main tale. Much of Luchini's huge 19th century house is rented out to other families, and the maids of all of these haute-bourgeois people including his own live together in squalor in small servants' rooms on the sixth floor, hence the title of the film. Only one maid is of the traditional sort, an elderly Bretonne maid from Britanny, and she departs near the beginning of the film. All the rest are gabbling and gregarious Spanish women, who evidently in the 1960s were flocking to Paris to earn money to send home. They form their own tightly-knit sub-culture, invisible to their employers. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong will be familiar with the myriads of Philippino maids who are strewn all over Central every Sunday chattering away to each other in Tagalog. It is very much the same phenomenon. Luchini is married to the ultimate bourgeoise wife, formerly 'a country girl', who is now ruthlessly climbing the social ladder and, wallowing in spoilt self-pity, 'exhausts' herself every day having lunch with her friends and buying expensive dresses. She is played to perfection by Sandrine Kiberlain, veteran of 48 films, who is so often cast as a wife. Admirers of the classic L'APPARTEMENT (THE APARTMENT, 1996, see my review) will recall her waiting at the airport for her husband at the end of the film, with her wan smile and her freckles. But the main action of this film concerns the Spanish maids. While their spoilt rich employers below live lives of stultifying boredom and pointlessness, these impoverished maids, when they are not rushing off to mass and crossing themselves devoutly (all but the sullen one who has become an atheist because her parents were murdered in front of her by Franco's men), have tremendous fun, play the guitar, cook paella, dance a bit of flamenco, and live a vivacious life of their own in their rarified micro-climate on the sixth floor. When his Bretonne maid, who had served the family for thirty years, leaves, Luchini and his wife desperately need a replacement. The dishes are piled high in the sink, the lazy Kiberlain does not know how to work a washing-machine, and Luchini is desperate because he does not have a clean shirt left to wear to work. What can these poor suffering spoilt rich people do? A miracle occurs: one of the Spanish women has just had her niece turn up from Spain, a beautiful thirty-something played with inspired vivacity and satirical demeanour by Natalia Verbeke. She is an amazing actress, born in Argentina in 1975, moved to Spain was she was eleven, lived with a bullfighter, and has appeared in many Spanish TV series and films. When she becomes the new maid, a new life opens up for Luchini, and he realizes that he prefers the maids on the sixth floor for company to his own boring wife and his empty life. And he begins to fall for Natalia, which is hardly surprising, as she is so alluring. The film is at once a tasteful satire on the vacuities of the empty lives of the upper middle classes, a hilarious comedy, a sad commentary, a poignant insight into the silent suffering of people without any money, and the shattering clash of cultures which occurs when someone steps out of the one world and into the other. The film is such a joy, and its satire is so affectionate and gentle (which perhaps makes it all the more devastating), that we learn a lot about Life. And Life is in short supply these days. But prepare to laugh yourself silly, while crying sometimes. Those are the best films, aren't they?