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Title: My Piece of the Pie (2011)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Karin Viard | ... | France | |
| Gilles Lellouche | ... | Steve Delarue | |
| Audrey Lamy | ... | Josy, la soeur de France | |
| Jean-Pierre Martins | ... | JP, le mari de Josy | |
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Raphaële Godin | ... | Mélody |
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Fred Ulysse | ... | Le père de France |
| Kevin Bishop | ... | Nick, le broker | |
| Marine Vacth | ... | Tessa | |
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Flavie Bataillie | ... | Lucie (as Flavie Bataille) |
| Tim Pigott-Smith | ... | Mr. Brown (as Tim Piggot-Smith) | |
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Philippe Lefebvre | ... | Le PDG dans la fête |
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Lunis Sakji | ... | Alban |
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Juliette Navis | ... | Julie, l'analyste financière (as Juliette Navis Bardin) |
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Camille Zouaoui | ... | Jessica |
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Adrienne Vereecke | ... | Mallaury |
France, a middle-aged divorcée, has just been laid off after 20 years at the same shipping company. She takes an overdose of pills but is rushed to hospital and makes a complete recovery. Desperate for employment to support her three children, she moves to Paris where she connects with Ahmed, the father of a former co-worker. France pretends to be a low-skilled immigrant to find menial work, but is then offered the chance to be the housekeeper for Stéphane, a wealthy French banker who has returned to Paris after 10 years in London. The relationship between the pair is initially tense, but he eventually warms to her, especially after she proves herself an adept hand at taking care of his son for a month, an extra duty for which she is paid EUR200 a day. The relationship between them turns amorous on a trip to London to meet with partners of Stéphane's firm. Written by Wiki
I had not great expectations for 'Ma part du gâteau'. France, 42, raising her 4 daughters alone, loses her job and goes on to work as a maid for a big bad trader. The premise seemed interesting and Klapisch certainly knows how to tell simple stories in a lively manner. But the title is really dumb and dull and I was unable to remember it for the couple of weeks prior to release. Klapisch's trademark is to use simple titles borrowed from popular phrases, but My Piece of Cake/Taking My Cut is not a visually stimulating simple idea, it's only a flat commonplace.
Directors back in the Studio System could moan about not being responsible for a bad title. Klapisch, after a decade of well-deserved success, enjoys total creative control, so the title is his mistake. And it perfectly stands for the big flaws, the failure to build up something really engaging on this interesting premise.
Lazy comes to my mind, yet that may be too harsh on Klapisch. He excels at brisk light comedies and may well have gone out of his league here in this attempt at social satire. If you look back at Klapisch movies, starting with 'Le Péril Jeune', you realize their strength is simplicity and rhythm. He tried his style on something more serious and under delivers. Worse, he totally misses the mark.
Lazy is however the right word for an 'auteur' who earned his spot at the top, with the power to shoot whatever he wants. OK, fashionable 'auteurs' like Cédric Klapisch end up working with too many yes-men, leaving them with little challenging creative opportunities, but that's laziness all the same. Laziness to come up with such a flimsy script on such a challenging subject matter, and laziness to cast the bland Gilles Lellouche as the hyper-realistic financial shark that should have been too fascinating for our own good.
If it's not laziness, that means Klapisch has risen to his level of incompetence and will only be able to dish out the same youthful light comedies again and again.