Review: Simplistic ‘Paulette’ plot goes to pot
“Paulette,” a hit a few years back in its native France, is far too broad and simplistic to enjoy as the offbeat soufflé it so desperately aims to be. At best, it’s an end-of-career showcase for star Bernadette Lafont, a leading actress of the French New Wave who died in 2013.
She plays Paulette, a crabby, 70-ish widow living in a rundown Paris housing project who’s been reduced to scouring dumpsters and market discard bins for sustenance. She was once a thriving restaurateur — ah, the irony! — but lost her eatery, now run by immigrants. (That her alcoholic husband and business partner died on 9/11 — though not in 9/11 — proves a heavy-handed non sequitur.)
Paulette is also an inexplicably nasty racist with a genial black cop son-in-law (Jean-Baptiste Anoumon) and adorable mixed-race grandson (Ismaël Dramé), both of whom endure her bigoted barbs with far too much grace.
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A contrived series of events leads the desperate Paulette to start working for a local drug ring to pay her bills. In short order, she’s successfully dealing weed and hash to the neighborhood stoners, nimbly eluding the authorities in ways that can only happen in film farces.
When she gets squeezed by the competition, Paulette counters by cranking out dope-laden baked goods — and sales soar. Her plucky trio of card-playing pals (Carmen Maura, Dominique Lavanant, Françoise Bertin) even join Paulette in her lucrative baking scheme. But can the gravy train last forever?
There are amusing bits scattered throughout, and the film, as directed by Jérôme Enrico from a script he wrote with Bianca Olsen, Laurie Aubanel and Cyril Rambour, moves swiftly enough. But Paulette is such an appalling creation — and her inevitable softening so unearned — that’s it tough to embrace her life-altering adventure.
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“Paulette.”
MPAA rating: R for drug content, language.
Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. In French with subtitles.
Playing: Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, Beverly Hills.
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