The Women on the 6th Floor - French movie from Amazon Prime Video

The Women on the 6th Floor (French: Les Femmes du 6ème étage; also known as Service Entrance) is a 2010 French film directed by Philippe le Guay. The film premièred at the Montpellier International Festival of Mediterranean Film in 2010. First shown in the USA in 2011.



Plot

Set in Paris in the 1960s, the film is a social comedy that pits the propriety of a well-to-do French family with the earthiness and humor of Spanish cleaning ladies who work in their apartment building. It follows Monsieur Joubert (Fabrice Luchini), an unadventurous stockbroker, as he befriends the Spanish maids who live on the top floor of his building. Maria (Natalia Verbeke), his new maid, introduces him to her compatriots and their simple but happy lives animated by friendship and folklore, in contrast to the emotional austerity of his own life. Slowly he recovers his joie de vivre by tasting life's simple pleasures; when his wife (Sandrine Kiberlain) falsely accuses him of having an affair he moves into an empty room in the servants' quarters upstairs, the first time he has had a bedroom of his own.

Two of the Spanish actresses, Berta Ojea and Concha Galán, did not speak French before the film and learned their roles phonetically.

The film was well received by critics and audiences in France (British critics disagreed). Le Monde wrote "The entertainment is as good as the actors are pitch-perfect. Fabrice Luchini and Sandrine Kiberlain are among our best stars." Dissenting, La Croix described the "lazy screenplay, poor dialogue, catalogue of clichés, indigent mise en scène". The New York Press reviewed the film at the Rendez-vous with French Film festival in New York, calling it "charming".

I thought it was a good comedy when I watched it via Amazon Prime Video.

References:

The Women on the 6th Floor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://buff.ly/1drDza5