PAULETTE

 

Los Angeles Premiere • Comedy • France, 2013

DCP • 1.85 • Dolby SRD • Color • 97 min

 

Directed by: Jérôme Enrico

Written by: Jérôme Enrico, Bianca Olsen, Laurie Aubanel, Cyril Rambour

Cinematography: Bruno Privat

Film Editing: Antoine Vareille

Original Score: Michel Ochowiak

Produced by: Ilan Goldman (Legende)

Cast: Bernadette Lafont (Paulette), Carmen Maura (Maria), Dominique Lavanant (Lucienne), Françoise Bertin (Renée), Jean-Baptiste Anoumon (Ousman)

International Sales: Gaumont

US Distributor: Cohen Media Group • Cohenmedia.net

 

Set far away from postcard Paris, Paulette is a bad-mannered comic stomp through the seedy edges of the city. Paulette is down on her luck. She might have retired in some dignity if her deceased alcoholic husband hadn’t squandered the family brasserie away. Now her golden years are spent nursing welfare checks in a bare housing project apartment. This is no pity party, however, and Paulette is no pushover. When she notices that the only people doing well in the neighborhood are the marijuana dealers, she decides to get in on the act. But when the local drug lords make it clear they don’t appreciate the competition, Paulette is forced to cook up another strategy. Bernadette Lafont manages the improbable feat of playing a misanthropic, xenophobic, “breaking-bad” grandma who somehow manages to steal your heart.

 

Writers Bianca Olsen, Laurie Aubanel and Cyril Rambour developed Paulette while students at ESEC, France’s College of Cinematography. Their screenwriting professor at the time was writer/director Jérôme Enrico. His career began as an actor in a film his father, Robert Enrico, directed A Little, a Lot, Passionately (1971). He spent the next decade on the other side of the camera as an assistant director and became second unit director on Queen Margot (1994) (COLCOA 2014). During that time, he also directed some successful shorts. In 2000, Enrico took a seat in the director’s chair with his first feature, L’Origine du monde, a dark thriller set in gangland Marseilles starring Roschdy Zem. Paulette, his first feature in ten years, is at once a bittersweet comedy and a critical look at the economic hardships facing the elderly in contemporary France. Cohen Media Group will release the film in the U.S. this year.

 

“Her [Bernadette Lafont’s] haughty air and impeccable delivery sell its dark and highly irreverent humor perfectly, without ever turning off the audience.”

- Henry J. Fromage MOVIE BOOZER