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France · 2010
Rated R · 1h 43m
Director François Ozon
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard
Genre Comedy
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When her husband is taken hostage by his striking employees, a trophy wife named Suzanne takes the reins of the family business and proves to be a remarkably effective leader. Business and personal complications arrive in the form of her ex-lover, a former union leader.
Like its heroine, Potiche is deceptively lightweight, its camp screwball fizziness giving way to a surprisingly cogent feminist parable, in which the personal proves again and again to be the most volatile variable in the political.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
You suspect, before long, that there is no strong reason for this production to exist, but it is reasonably good fun all the same.
The laughs are purely surface; the film's women's-lib pretensions seem grafted on as if to lend significance to a story that would benefit from a lighter, less cerebral touch. Still, it's hard to resist La Deneuve's charms.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Helping to keep this ship from keeling over is the great professionalism and light touch of Deneuve and Depardieu. Costars numerous times, they go together as comfortably as an old pair of gloves. Potiche very much counts on this, and it has not miscalculated.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
An Orson Welles-size Gérard Depardieu does gallant work as the town's leftist mayor.
Funny, twisty, and sometimes bittersweet, Potiche is a fluffy good time, but not entirely insubstantial.
Ms. Deneuve has been directed by everyone from François Truffaut to Roman Polanski, but she has gone on the record saying she has a special rapport with Mr. Ozon (the 2002 film "8 Women" remains a classic). He brings out such a loopy delicacy in her that she shines-a charming, witty centerpiece from start to finish.
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
The chief reason to see Potiche - maybe the only reason - is Deneuve.
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