The Housekeeper (2002)

As i liked miss Dequenne in "Rosetta" a long time ago upon recommendation of a Greek friend, i picked this movie. But as her filmography was just beginning, i didn't get a lot of choices either.Actually, i realized that this movie could pass for my future as it tells the story of a sad mature single man in Paris. Outside his work, he has a very limited social life. His decision to hire a help woman leads him to find and use his love box and find happiness again.This speaks to me and thus the movie become personal. This was my town (paris), my life (loner), my trait (grumpy) but this was also my heart (generous). I think it was a great plot to have a break in country because it brings more light and more shine in their romance.A good french film, albeit it is forbidden for deaves with its lack of subtitles and the piano soundtrack is really horrible!

A slow meditation on winter/summer affairs. Less overtly this could be seen as a look at rebound relationships. We get far more of sour Jacques' side than that of sweet Laura's but it seems that neediness bordering on desperation is all they have in common. This was one flaw for me.I've seen this billed as a comedy...the laughs were harder to find than the romance. It may be that they were lost in translation...but at the same time I wonder if I am giving this film more credit than it's due. I see someone from Bucharest gave high marks to "Autumn in New York" which I will never rent. Well unless Joan Chen specifically orders me to do so...Anyway, back to "The Housekeeper", my *wife* gave up on this film. I'd say that's a pretty strong damning of this as a "romantic comedy." I actually did like the fact that Jacques was neither a filthy rich gent...nor a filthy lech. In fact, he was the more hesitant one wading into the waters here. However, Laura was allowed the depth of a kiddie pool. Another problem for me...Despite Jean-Pierre Bacri's frump and Emilie Dequenne's rump (sorry but really if we saw half of much of her mind as we did of her body that could have only helped this film) I can only manage a trois for this.3/10

While some Americans on lower rungs of the cultural ladder are clamoring for "freedom fries," those who appreciate the special verve and wit often the backbone of a good French film won't want to miss "Housekeeper" (the U.S. title).What could have been little more than a ninety-minute sitcom sparkles both because of the fine performances of the two leads and the story which deviates from an anticipated trite line.Jacques (Jean-Pierre Bacri) saw his marriage crumble when his wife departed. A recording engineer for both jazz and classical discs, he lives a messy life and needs a housekeeper. Responding to an ad he posted in a nearby cafe, Laura (Emily Duquenne) is about twenty years younger than Jacques and eager for the job. Actually desperate. Despite a Luddite reaction against single male's best friend - the vacuum cleaner - Laura straightens out Jacques's flat. But then she asks to move in for a few days as her boyfriend is kicking her out solely because their relationship has ended (we never see this most unreasonable man).One thing leads to another and, no surprise and not a spoiler, Jacques and Laura find themselves making passionate love. She clearly is deeply in lust with him and they take a holiday, motoring to the coast.What happens next? - hey, see the film.A man Jacques's age finding himself with a besotted, beautiful and very horny young woman would, in most stories, be either exploitive or lost in the fantasy of a perceived stroke of incredible fortune. Director Claude Berri gives Jacques a more interesting persona. He has no qualms or guilt about bedding the lovely Laura but he is neither the kind of man who takes selfish advantage of women nor the sort who takes leave of his senses. He's wholly appealing as a decent guy, not a cad or a fool.Laura? Ms. Duquenne plays her character to perfection. She's the kind of ingenue most men want and fear and the daughter who can drive any parent to drink. BUT...she does windows!!!!!Frederic Botton composed a brisk, very nice score."Housekeeper" won't show in many cities but put in on your "To Rent" list.8/10.

Claude Berri's Une Femme de Ménage (Housekeeper) takes us to a familiar world of contemporary French cinema: a casual, chic quartier of Paris where a successful fifty-something jazz record producer named Jacques (Jean-Pierre Bacri) lives in a very comfortable flat that's a very big mess because his wife has left him. He answers a notice tacked up on a neighborhood café and before long Laura (Émilie Dequenne), a twenty-something with a perfect, ripe body and cooperative good nature equally in evidence, is not only coming twice a week to clean and iron, but, because her boyfriend kicks her out, has moved in. Next thing you know she's offering that body to Jacques and when his estranged wife Constance (played in a tortured cameo by director Catherine Breillat) appears at the door and begs for a reconciliation, he decides to escape on a two-week vacation in Brittany at his artist-chicken farmer friend Ralph's place, and Laura begs to be taken along.There is something charming about this moment when Jacques and Laura head for the seacoast, Laura packing the vacuum cleaner (`respirateur' in French) to practice (she's been using a broom, so she can enjoy hip-hop on the boom box; he's told her she must master the `respirateur' if she's going to get more work) - and insisting on getting herself a haircut and dye job enroute. She's very much a work in progress, and the uncertainty of her relationship with Jacques is interesting. It's so absurd you half believe it might work.Laura is eager to please and so docile and loving, poor Jacques would have a new mate for sure if he didn't mind one twenty-five or thirty years younger whose taste runs to loud pop, junky TV, and trashy magazines. The dialogue in the car defines the uncertainty. He doesn't love her -- he'd be a fool to - but he likes having her around.Ralph (Jacques Frantz) provides a whimsically eccentric note - he paints portraits of his pet chickens and then serves them for dinner; the house smells like a barnyard. But it also turns out, when Laura snoops in Ralph's bedroom and finds a ring with Jacques' name on it, that Constance has been there recently in her wanderings and has slept with Ralph.The beach is what separates Jacques and Laura. She loves the water; he hates it. He covers up and reads while she plunges, and then she becomes a regular in volleyball games with two teams of well built young men. Late at night she insists that Jacques take her dancing. He meets an old woman friend there - also just abandoned by her mate. . . but this sounds more complicated than it is. What happens is that when Jacques says he's about to go back to Paris, where Laura, who can be anything she wants here, is only his housekeeper, Laura finds a young man, and is as ready to pair off with him as she was with Jacques.Jacques meets the young man's mom on the beach. She's getting divorced. He's sympathetic. He goes for a swim to keep mom company. He gets a cramp in the water. She helps him out. Maybe they'll become a couple. THE END.It's too bad this novel adaptation by the talented M. Berri trails off this way. There is real fun in the sense of possibility Laura's voluptuous appearance provides. In French movies, old, ugly men are deemed attractive: note that Laura's cute new boyfriend doesn't even have a speaking part. He's just a walk-on - or rather a run-off: he lopes down to the ocean with Laura and that's the last we see of him. This alone makes Housekeeper a fresh vision for American viewers.However, there's hardly anything profound here, despite the French point of view, nor can Laura, whose nice body and youth are her chief coping skills, be seen as a liberated woman in the mold of Jeanne Moreau in Jules et Jim. Femme de Ménage is fun, but there's something hasty and condescending about it. An Eric Rohmer story probably wouldn't have the uneasy class aspects of Laura's inappropriateness for Jacques: age would the only factor (compare Claire's Knee). To see how hasty the story is, think of the sensitive and profound character study of a lonely man in Claude Sautet's 1992 Un Coeur en Hiver.