newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MIRIAM RINN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

In “The Women on the 6th Floor,” the maids are immigrants from Spain and the discrimination is class based rather than racial, but the sentiment and perspective in this French comedy is very similar to “The Help,” the movie currently in theaters about African-American domestic workers in Mississippi. Both films are set in the early 1960s, when cultural norms that had seemed set in stone began to shift and slide, as if they were perched on sand.

Fabrice Luchini plays Jean-Louis Joubert, a staid, utterly respectable money manager, whose world view is expanded when he gets to know the colony of Spanish maids living in tiny rooms in the attic of his apartment building. The old Breton maid who has taken care of his family for most of his life quits in a snit, and Mme. Joubert (Sandrine Kiberlain) hears from her friends that maids from Spain are the latest thing. In that way, Maria comes to work for the Jouberts. Played by Natalia Verbeke, Maria is young, hard-working, but no patsy. She demands a higher salary than Jean-Louis wants to pay, but he agrees when she presents him with a perfectly cooked soft-boiled egg, something the previous maid never mastered.

Luchini is one of France’s most popular comic actors, and although he’s more contained here than in other films, his wonderfully expressive face records all the emotions he feels as he gets to know the women better. He first ventures upstairs when the maids’ shared toilet stops up. It hardly merits the name; it is just a hole in the floor with two footpads, a nasty contraption familiar to those who traveled to France at that time. Joubert arranges for a plumber to repair the works and earns the women’s gratitude. Everyone, that is, except for Carmen, the communist in the group. Most of the women have left Franco’s Spain to make some money, but Carmen vows she’ll never go back until the fascist dictator is gone.

Jean-Louis intercedes with the building’s cranky concierge on behalf of the women, insisting that she deliver their mail, and allows them to make emergency phone calls from his apartment. When one of the women’s husbands beats her up, Jean-Louis pulls strings to find her a separate room. These small kindnesses build a relationship, and he realizes that he’s lived below these women for years, never knowing anything about them, and suddenly that seems very wrong.

As in “The Help” and “Upstairs Downstairs,” the assumption is made that the benefit of being poor and working class or a member of an oppressed minority is a deeper and more vibrant emotional life. The oppressed masses may have to work much harder and lack material comforts, but they sure know how to feel. I’m not certain where this notion comes from, but it’s shared by director Philippe Le Guay. The friendships between the maids are warmer and closer than between Suzanne Joubert and her gossipy luncheon friends, and we know without being shown that the Spanish women are far more devoted mothers than Suzanne, who has sent her young sons to boarding school. There’s an inverse snobbery at work here, but Luchini and Kiberlain carry it lightly and remain sympathetic throughout. Kiberlain especially, who was so moving in “Mlle. Chambon,” evokes compassion for a woman who is trapped in a gilded prison. She’s an obedient prisoner for the most part, but emanates a constant anxiety about breaking the rules. Suzanne is the woman The Feminine Mystique was written for.

This is too light and genial a film to hammer the viewer with contemporary connections, but it’s hard not to think of the issues that the French have with foreign workers today, or with the French children and grandchildren of those foreign workers. Like the current immigrants, the Spanish maids are very religious, and although it’s not an alien faith to Jean-Louis, it is unfamiliar. He barely remembers to cross himself when he goes to church with them. Still, the overall theme of tolerance and mutual respect is just as appropriate now as then. When circumstances send Jean-Louis upstairs for an extended stay, he achieves a sort of liberation, a new openness that he’s learned from his immigrant friends.

ALSO BY MIRIAM RINN

‘Toast’ movie review, trailer: Pleasures to be found

'Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life' movie review, trailer: Too much mystery

‘Brighton Rock’ movie review, trailer: Sleekly entertaining

Chasing Madoff’ movie review, trailer: Has feel of vanity

‘Mozart’s Sister’ movie review, trailer: A family affair

'Point Blank' movie review: A French 'woman-in-distress' thriller

'The Tree' movie review: A heavy-handed and obvious drama

Jewish movie reviews: 'Sholom Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness' and 'Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish'

‘The Names of Love’ movie review: A romantic comedy with Woody Allen influence

Viva Riva! movie review: A lot of firsts for crime thriller

'The Trip' movie review: A comedy 'bromance' with adult themes

‘Bridge Flight’ movie review: A return to Hollywood’s golden age

Movie Review: 'Louder Than a Bomb'

‘The First Grader’

‘City of Life and Death’ movie review: Epic film dramatizes story of The Rape of Nanking

‘Passion Play’ movie review: All-star drama …

‘The Bang Bang Club’: Movie review and trailer

‘The Double Hour’: Movie review and trailer

‘Wretches & Jabberers’: Movie review and trailer

‘Potiche’: Movie review and trailer

‘Of Gods and Men’ movie review: Truly spiritual

‘Carancho’ movie review: Crashing the Oscars

‘Poetry' movie review: A Cannes best screenplay

‘Cold Weather' movie review: A low-key comedy/mystery

‘Kaboom' movie review: Ridiculous and hilarious and surprisingly entertaining

‘Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune' movie review and trailer

‘You Wont Miss Me' movie review with trailer

‘The Tempest': Movie review and trailer

‘Cool It' movie takes on climate change

Movie review: ‘Tiny Furniture'

Movie review: ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'

‘The Social Network' is a rousing success (with movie trailer)

Michael Imperioli maintains mood of intense intimacy in ‘The Hungry Ghosts' (movie review and trailer)

Movie review: ‘The Freebie' provokes a series of questions (with trailer)

Review: ‘The Hideaway (Le Refuge)' is restricted by its own sentimentality