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The Godmother

A gall bladder removal (mine) prevented me from seeing this during the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival back in February, but happily, I got another chance last week. I say happily because The Godmother (or La daronne in France, Mama Weed in UK/USA) has bags of charm to go with its bags of hash. Isabelle Huppert is some sort of ageless wonder - she's 67, playing mid-50s, I'd reckon, and she sparkles in the role. C'est incroyable!

Huppert plays Patience Portefeux, a police translator, who is tasked with keeping tabs on a pending drug deal. Someone she knows inadvertently gets involved and she is suddenly given a choice - play it by the book and help the cops, one of whom she's going out with, or save the young trafficker. The decision is made quickly and this informs the rest of the film. The film, directed by Jean-Paul Salomé, handles her transformation from professional widowed mother of two adult daughters, to North African drug dealer, Mama Weed in a playful manner. The very real danger of ripping off violent gangsters is left on the fringes, though the ramifications are explored later, in a darkly funny scene at a Wenzhou wedding.

The film is based on a 2018 novel by Hannelore Cayre and it, ever so lightly, looks at modern French society and some of its issues with race, tolerance and incarceration, especially of North African Muslims (some neat echoes of Jacques Audiard's excellent Un prophete). Portefeux is part Moroccan and her father AND husband weren't shy of a spot of the old law-bending, so her actions are not so hard to explain. She's also a bit hard up, caring for her infirmed mother and struggling with the payments to the nursing home. Her exchanges with the low-level dealers, Scotch and Cocoa Puff, are highlights. Another is the slow, collegial/criminal bond she forms with her apartment landlady, Mrs Fo, played by Nadja Nguyen.

The film is pitched just about right, the performances are spot on and the cinematography depicts the grungier side of Paris. If you like your crime drama/comedies packaged as a light soufflé, you can't go far wrong with The Godmother.

An incidental - a poster on the wall of the police chief, Phillipe's office is of Polanski's Le Pianiste NOT Haneke's La Pianiste, which starred Huppert. This must be deliberate, but why?

The Godmother opens at Palace Cinemas and the Luna on May 20th.

See also:

As mentioned above, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2009) covers similar ground, though much more grittily, and Huppert is great in Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon (1981).

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