Fabrice Luchini is one of the delights of world cinema, and in “The Women on the 6th Floor” he finds a role ideally suited to his odd mix of fussiness and sensitivity. He plays a Paris financier in the 1960s who lives a staid and rather self-satisfied existence, until he starts taking an interest in his new maid.
The maid, Maria (Natalia Verbeke), lives on the sixth floor of the building he owns, on the same floor with all the other maids — all of them Spanish — who work in the neighborhood. When he goes upstairs for the first time in years, he finds that their toilet is backed up and disgusting and that they have no shower. Expanded by his growing, if unacknowledged, affection for Maria, he gets to know all the women on the sixth floor, and the experience gradually opens up his life.
Luchini often plays rigid, shrewd and easily bristled men, who behind their rigidity have something pure that they’re trying to protect, including a boyish wonder. The financier’s internal journey, manifested in action, is one of the joys of the film, but not the only one. The period detail grounds it and gives us an interesting look into class as it existed in France some 45 years ago.
Verbeke, an Argentine- born Spanish actress, is lovely here, gentle even as she brings to her performance a wisdom born of personal history — the hardship of growing up poor.
Meanwhile, Sandrine Kiberlain, as the lady of the house, beautifully conveys the superficiality of the rich woman’s life and the smallness of her mentality. Even better, she shows that this woman is growing into realizations that she has been frantically trying to put off.
Her point of arrival — when she says, “Those women up there are alive. Down here we’re dead” — is a great moment because of the way Kiberlain lands it.
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Movie review
“The Women on the 6th Floor”
Grade: B
Starring Fabrice Luchini, Natalia Verbeke and Sandrine Kiberlain. Directed by Philippe Le Guay. In French with English subtitles.
Unrated. At Landmark Midtown. 1 hour, 44 minutes.
Bottom line: Delightful.
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