Madame * * *

      “Woody Allen Lite” might be one way of looking at this. The spirit and style of Allen is there but not the wit or originality.  Half the jokes and cutting remarks we’d all heard before.  Interestingly  it is shot in English too, so I don’t think she was aiming for her domestic market with this one.

        This isn’t exactly memorable material. Perhaps that is why French director Amanda Sthers wanted the injection of highly credible actors

Did Woody RSVP?

       Using  her unending versatility and extraordinary adaptability Toni Collette effectively overcomes an obvious miscasting. Harvey Keitel effectively plays her husband. They’re rich Americans in Paris who are running out of dough, so they have to start selling off the art collection.  Enter a British art dealer. Also a very young gay London lord mayor and his partner and various others, all gathered at a dinner party at their beautiful Paris home.  Also present is their obnoxious son who we are told is a successful writer (that is hard to believe).  His unexpected appearance brings the dinner party to thirteen.  The hostess finds that a frighteningly unlucky number and persuades the maid to sit in on the dinner party too to make it a table of fourteen.   She reluctantly does so but ends up winning the heart of the art dealer.

         The second half of the film - post dinner party - shows the hostess blistering with anger as she realises her maid is happy and in love (two things missing from her own life).  
What I like about Rossy de Palma  is that she could steal the scene from a bevy of beauties or celebrated actors.  She’s no oil painting but gosh she’s got presence!  She plays the maid and does so with her usual extraordinary bearing.

     It’s an amusing film.  You won't begrudge the time spent watching it, but, like me, you might be disappointed with the rather wimpy ending.