Film review: Populaire

Sports films: from Rocky to The Karate Kid, you know the score. The plucky outsider overcomes adversity to progress through the rounds and reach the final, triumphing at the last minute (usually in slow-mo) over the hostile favorite. It’s a story we’ve all seen before – but not with speed typing.

Debbie Stowe

The “sport” was apparently all the rage in 1950s France. So learns Rose (Déborah François), a Normandy ingénue who flees her gruff father and an unwanted engagement to a local prole and heads for the big city – or Lisieux. Having beaten off a squadron of competitors to secure a coveted secretarial job at an insurance agency, Rose’s breakneck typing catches the eye of her boss, Louis (Romain Duris). A chain-smoking grump, he decides to groom Rose to become a champion speed typist – as you do – and moves her into his mansion so he can hothouse her.

This gets the Normandy curtain twitchers in a tizz, but Louis’s intentions are broadly honorable: much like professor Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, he wants to mould his protégé, who must submit to a strict regime of typing, piano-playing and jogging to keep her sharp as she advances through the various rounds of the national speed typing competition.

Watching people type – even if they can do so very quickly – doesn’t sound like ideal cinematic material, and it is to director Régis Roinsard’s credit that the competition scenes come off with aplomb. All the main actors – François and Duris, as well as The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo and Shaun Benson as Louis’s best friends – seem to have fun with their roles. The filmmakers mine the fashions of the fifties well, giving the movie a peppy retro feel.

However, the period setting also presents problems. Populaire depicts a world where women bitchily jockey with each other to be hired as a secretary – a post held up as the pinnacle of achievement for the “modern woman”. But while Rose states that she wants a man who would treat her as an equal, her submission to the often dictatorial Louis is at odds with this sentiment, and the film seems to oscillate between endorsing and condoning the gender inequality of the time, which in 2014 makes for some uncomfortable viewing.

While the interlacing sporting competition and romcom strands work well enough together, these must be two of the most predictable and cliché-ridden cinematic genres, and as soon as the film has set out its stall, there is absolutely no doubt where things are headed. The only surprise is one hotel scene near the end that reminds you that French, not American, standards are in play, no matter how much Populaire resembles typical Hollywood fare in every other way. The storyline even concludes in America, in a clear nod to its values and inspiration.

Though it remains silly – and smoky – throughout, Roinsard’s romcom hits its stride after a slow start. To enjoy it you must take the film on its own terms: pre-feminist frothy French fun.

Director: Régis Roinsard