Glasgow Film Festival review: Populaire

By Siobhan Synnot
Published on 10/02/2013 00:00

THE Glasgow Film Festival is a shrewd, crowd-pleasing event, keenly aware that February is a time for comfort food and comfort films.

Populaire (12A)

Director: Régis Roinsard

Running time: 111 minutes

* * * *

That makes it ideally cast as the first opportunity for UK audiences to catch Populaire, a sprightly, spring-like opening film that should chase away any ­wintery blues.

From the moment its snappy credits bounce across the screen, it announces itself as a billet doux to 1950s filmmaking, shot in the style of those Ross Hunter productions where everyone had a fully stocked bar and smoked with commitment.

It’s also an era where society had more rigid rules for the genders – and there was adventure in transcending them. Post-war, women were entering into the workplace to become what screenwriter Eve Ahlert called “pre-feminist feminists”, and in 1958 Normandy, this ­includes Rose (Déborah François), a young French ­secretary who pecks out sentences on her keyboard with two fingers, like me, ­except with speed and accuracy.

Her boss Louis (Romain Duris) talent-spots her skill and moves her into his country home. His intentions are chaste however: he is coaching her up for national and in­ternational speed typing competitions.

Rather than running up steps in the manner of Rocky, Rose runs up copies of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary for practice; and instead of punching frozen carcasses, she 
learns to punch out the keyboard with her other eight digits. It is surprising how exhilarating typing can be, and director Régis Roinsard gives the secretarial competitions real tension.

It goes without saying that Louis and Rose are also enormously attracted to each other, but Louis is a commitment-phobe who has already let his childhood sweetheart (The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo with a chic Sophia Loren hairdo) slip off and marry someone else. Boss and secretary are assisted in their doomed attempts to resist each other by the usual litany of misunderstandings and setbacks – it can’t be said that Populaire is big on unpredictability – but mostly, it manages to keep you interested, if not guessing.

Along the way, many will be drawn to Populaire’s celebration of the artistry that once went into popular movie-making, with cinematography that recreates the 1950s’ generous curvy designs, and actresses in clothes so retro fabulous they make current fashion’s ­attempts to conjure the ­vintage styles look vague and un­inspired.

Maybe Roinsard believes that movies lost something when they added irony, because his film doesn’t fully exploit its satirical potential, although it does sneak in some calculating anachronisms. “I don’t think you should smoke at work,” Rose ventures as Louis suffuses her with his cigarette. “There will have to be a law against it, pumpkin,” replies her boss confidently, because the EEC is barely a year old at this stage and more interested in passing laws about butter and coal.

Feather-light and frothy, although a subtext of female empowerment does bubble to the surface, Populaire doesn’t really engage with the era’s fear of female emancipation. This may irritate or disappoint some, but the movie never claims to be much more than a bagatelle; a French film with an eye on pleasing an international audience. I’m equally unembarrassed that I enjoyed this quite a bit.«

Twitter: @SiobhanSynnot

Populaire opens this year’s Glasgow Film Festival with two screenings at Glasgow Film Theatre on Thursday. www.glasgowfilm.org/festival