Paulette

Paulette, an old woman in the Paris suburbs who cannot live on her pension, is in debt and about to be evicted. She watches the young men dealing in her neighbourhood, works out what they earn and decides to go into business. Because of her age nobody suspects her. In short order she builds her own network. The film is not interested in crime comedy. It is interested in the invisibility of old age: nobody stops Paulette because nobody looks at her. The same invisibility both makes her work easy and is what has left her alone for years. The form is French popular comedy: suburban blocks, kitchen scenes, short bursts of violence. The tone is light and the poverty is real. Jérôme Enrico directed. Bernadette Lafont, in the lead, was one of the early faces of the French New Wave and had worked with Truffaut and Chabrol. This became the most watched work of her late career, and she died a year after it came out. Carmen Maura and Dominique Lavanant play her friends. Who it is for: viewers who like French comedy and older women as protagonists. Who it is not for: anyone expecting seriousness about the subject. The film makes racist prejudice into material for jokes and then behaves as though it is correcting them, and that turn is not always convincing.