The Women On the Sixth Floor (Les Femmes du 6ème étage)
Last night I selected an absolutely delightful French film, The Women On the Sixth
Floor. I am becoming very partial towards French and Korean films. It seems like the ones I select off of Amazon Prime are decent. The Women on the Sixth Floor stars Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Kiberlain, and Natalia Verbeke. I thought Natalia Verbeke was just great. She played her part perfectly.
The Women on the 6th Floor opens in Paris in 1962, in the flat of the Joubert family. Jean-Louis Joubert (Luchini), a stockbroker, was born in the fifth-floor flat of the building and expects to eventually die there. He will pass it on to his son, as did his father and grandfather before him. Jean-Louis’ elegant but chilly wife Suzanne (Kiberlain), is in the process of redecorating the apartment following the death of her mother-in-law, and the radical change causes the departure (it’s hard to say whether she quits or is fired) of the family’s longtime maid Germaine (Gleizer). Encouraged by her society friends that it’s no longer chic to hire French maids, Suzanne hires the recently arrived young Spaniard María (Verbeke) to cook and clean for them – something the Jouberts are woefully inadequate at handling on their own.
As soon as the beautiful, young maid arrives in the Joubert home, the viewer senses exactly where this story is heading: toward the classic upstairs/downstairs affair between the boss and the domestic help. That is all I will say because this is a movie that you should see.