The Women on the Sixth Floor

This blinkered period French comedy is so middle-of-the-road it may as well have white lines painted down the screen. It tells of Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini), a conservative family man and stockbroker in 1960s Paris whose eyes are opened to the twentieth century and other people’s lives when he begins to fancy the beautiful new Spanish maid, María (Natalia Verbeke). The film pays lip service to ideas of social and national divisions and lingering ancien attitudes before the ruptures of ’68, but really this is about hanging out with a gaggle of shrill, caricatured Spanish backstairs folk (including Carmen Maura as the obligatory lefty agitator) and running along with an ageing man’s ridiculous fantasy. The film sidesteps all complexities and leaves us with a closing shot that should come with a bucket.