Chic! (2015) Reviews

• French comedy on the high price paid by fashion victims

  t-dooley-69-3869162015-04-06

  Helene (Marina Hands – 'Tell No-one') works for a Fashion House that of the capricious Alicia Ricosi (Fanny Ardant). Ms Ricosi is putting together her new collection when her lover deserts her – she needs inspiration to work and so has an artistic hissy fit and gives up. Helene is a fixer and so has to find a new muse. Her boss is a quintessential coward and bully and swerves all blame in a master class of deflection leaving Helene to take the rap – hence she is a complete cow to nigh on everyone else. She also has a nice house that she is getting landscaped but decides to fire the gardener just because she feels like being a biatch. Well fate has a way of bringing the most unlikely of souls together and as the sands of time run out for the new collection so does Alicia meet the recently fired gardener and voilà a muse is born. What follows is a story of ups and downs, lies, cover ups and a pretension smörgåsbord – that is actually very funny in places. Director Jérôme Cornuau has made a film that is both original and charming. His main man is not classically good looking either and I very much appreciated that an ordinary man could stir emotions like he does here. The laughs are worth waiting for but there are also other issues examined here, that of career progression over integrity, idol worship, the fickleness of fashion and the complete duplicity that is concomitant with those that move in high places. This is a good ride though and has Gallic warmth underneath the well observed pretension. A bit of a love story, a bit of a fashionista expose and a bit of drama; not a bad effort at all and one I can wholeheartedly recommend.

• French version of _The Proposal_ and a dozen similar movies

  name99-92-5453892015-08-29

  The most interesting thing about this movie is seeing how very like a Hollywood movie it was, in spite of being French. We have a very standard plot --- driven neat-freak boss interacts with laid-back messy slob, they fight, they interact some more, they fall in love. Unfortunately we also get the standard problems with the genre: I'd rate it as worth watching because of the exoticism, but as a US movie I'd have abandoned it after 15 min. The only thing that makes a movie like this worth watching is the comedy, and there simply wasn't enough of that to justify its existence in this genre. On the positive side, the lead actress is a delight to watch. She's not exactly beautiful, but she carries, clothes , and projects herself so well that it doesn't matter. (Which makes it even more of a travesty to imagine that she'd settle for a slob in her life. In the last 10 minutes or so, you basically see her carriage melt away and I, for one, do not see this as a great triumph, an improvement in who she is.)

• Fun way to pass the time

  sally_edsall2016-03-19

  I saw this at the French Film Festival in Sydney, 2016. I'm an avid watcher of what I call "fashion- porn" movies - from biopics about designers to docos based on the fashion industry or magazines etc. In the absence of any of these this year,I went to this film, and found it seductive and charming. It's one in the endless series of rom-coms that the French film industry seems capable of churning out every year, and yes, there is a traditionally happy "boy gets girl" ending. Along the way there's a divaesque turn by Fanny Ardant - she seemed to be having a lot of fun with the role, but for all that seemed surprisingly wooden. Not the greatest film ever, and I can't see it getting a general release in English speaking countries, but it was an amusing way to spend an hour and a half in the cinema.