Signis

Les Femmes du 6eme Etage (Women of the 6th Floor/ Service Entrance)

(JPEG)

(France, 2011, d. Philippe Le Guay) (COMPETITION)

National and cultural identity is a concern in 21st century Europe. Who are all these migrants? Where do they come from? What are they doing here? Is it just economic migration? Does it threaten the national culture? According to this entertaining comedy, the questions have been round for a long time. In fact, in France, 1962, there was a huge influx of Spanish maids. This comedy (like Almanya - Welcome to Germany, concerning Turks and Germans) is an entertaining and often telling way to make a point about migrants and their being welcomed or not and their trying to live within a different culture.

Fabrice Luchini tends to take serious roles, often villains in historical pieces. Here he is effective as a comedian, but mainly in his reactions to what is going on around him, often a performance of double takes. He is a financial adviser who has lived in his apartment all his life, inheriting his company from his father. He has an ambitious socialite wife (Sandrine Kiberlain) and two insufferable young sons. He has a maid who has worked for 25 years with the family. When she leaves, his wife takes her friends’ advice to employ a Spanish maid, Maria (Natalia Verbeke) and you know the scene is set for his loosening up, even falling in love, his becoming more Spanish as he gets to know all the Spanish maids who live on his top floor, and his wife getting her comeuppance.

It is generally bright and breezy, the group of older maids (moving out of Franco’s Spain, so providing a subtext for the film) are a lively and devout lot and Maria, of course, has a secret. While it does work out, on the whole, as we might expect, it is the funny moments, the sentimental moments (and the satirical moments at the expense of gossiping Parisian women) that carry it along as an entertainment and as a film with a cultural message,

Peter Malone