The Richest Woman Alive (La Femme la plus riche du monde), Film, (France 2025), directed by Thierry Klifa 8* out of 10

 

Based on the true story of the family behind the L'Oreal Cosmetics Empire The Richest Woman Alive features a strong screenplay and excellent performances in the main roles by Isabelle Huppert and Laurent Lafitte. Highly recommended. 

Marianne Farrère (Isabelle Huppert) a capable businesswoman in her 70s is at the helm a leading multinational cosmetics empire based in France which she inherited from her parents and expanded with great success. This makes her one of the richest women in the world. Her husband Guy (André Marcon) supports Marianne in a quiet manner both in business and family matters keeping an eye on the continuity of the family's control and succession in running the enterprise. Marianne is disappointed in her daughter Frédérique (Marina Fois). Devoted to her father Guy,  Frédérique has become a housewife with occasional projects in charity and publishing and married a Jewish man, a risk-averse safe pair of hands in family and business matters. Jerome (Raphaël Personnaz) an ex-army man in his late 30s, the butler to Marianne and Guy, is efficient and loyal to the family and especially close to Guy.

When the flamboyant young gay photographer Pierre-Alain Fantin (Laurent Lafitte) comes to take photographs for an image lifting feature on Marianne in the aptly named fashion and people magazine "Selfish" Marianne becomes greatly amused and infatuated. Willingly she allows his gregarious personality to bring trendiness and disorder into her haut-bourgeois home and gradually gives him ever greater access to her family life. She enjoys the flamboyancy with which he begins to dominate every scene in which he is present. She rewards Fantin and keeps him close with monetary gifts that start with millions and gradually increase to the hundreds of millions. 

Family members and the loyal family butler continue to accept what they see as Marianne's whim with outwardly displayed equanimity. But as Marianne's gifts to the shameless Pierre-Alain keep adding up and he starts to gain ever greater influence over Marianne's family and business affairs, Frédérique decides to make a stance against her mother. She takes steps to remove Pierre-Alain's influence and recover some of the financial benefits and privileges her mother has granted him. Marianne and Pierre-Alain fight back, while Guy, helped by his trusted servant Jerome, tries to preserve the family fortune and restore family unity without openly confronting Marianne.

This is French corporate and family drama with comedic traits not so loosely based on the true story of the Banier-Bettencourt affair that shook the French family behind the L'Oréal cosmetics empire and fortune. The screenplay with high-quality dialogues and the main actors make this film recommended viewing.

The high-quality screenplay (by Cédric Angers, Jacques Fieschi and director Thierry Klifa) holds a good balance between drama and humour. A strong acting ensemble makes this depiction of a nearly incredible story unfolding among the hardworking section of the French superrich believable. 

Predictable lives are being shaken up by the force of an eccentric domineering personality and a businesswoman who has found a taste for romance and adventure. 

Isabelle Huppert and Laurent Lafitte have chemistry and give outstanding performances. Highly recommended.        

Follemente (Madly), Film (Italy, 2025), Cowritten and directed by Paolo Genovese 7.5* out of 10

 

Follemente (Madly) is an engaging romantic comedy with a twist presented in occasionally chaotic but ultimately entertaining ways. Very watchable. 

On their first date, Piero (Edoardo Leo) meets Lara (Pilar Fogliati) at her apartment for a meal. Each one hopes that the other will prove attractive enough outside and in. And that in that case, the other will find them attractive enough so that more may follow. At the same time, both are acutely aware that they might unintentionally give the other an unfavourable impression that might ruin their chances. 

So far so ordinary. What makes Follemente stand out is that while the outer dialogue goes on, two motley crews of four comedic characters each provide a running commentary; a group of rapidly ageing somewhat blasé men for Piero and an ensemble of comely ladies for Lara. For fans of  Italian theatre, Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) may come to mind. 

As one might expect, the teasing and jousting of their inner critics among themselves keep Piero and Lara somewhat confused and occasionally slipping and sliding in Freudian ways. 

Can any inner clarity and coherence be achieved in the outer-world under such turbulent inner circumstances?  Will Piero and Lara stay the course? If so, will there be mutually satisfying sex on the first date?   

Whatever the answers, Genovese's imagination approaches the subject in engaging ways, although the disorderly inner-voice ensembles can occasionally make it challenging for audiences to identify deeply with the two outer-world protagonists. Nonetheless, this is an intelligent feel-good romantic comedy with a bit of drama that keeps the audience engaged. A very watchable film, Follemente became a box-office-hit with cinema audiences in Italy.

No Other Choice, Film (Korea 2025), co-written and directed by Park Chan-wook, 9* out of 10

 

Cowriter and director Park Chan-wook and a talented ensemble of actors have created a dark comedy/thriller for Trumpian times in the best of Korean filmmaking skill and tradition. Highly recommended.   

After 25 years in the paper business, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has achieved a respected middle management in the paper industry. He has fallen in love married a single mother Miri (Son Ye-jin), become a father to her son Si-One (Kim Woo Seung) and their daughter Ri-One (Choi So Yul) who has difficulty expressing herself in any other way than through her prodigious musical talent on the cello.

When the Korean paper industry goes through an economic crisis, Man-su's career and those of many of his colleagues who work in pulp turns into pulp over-night. As he realizes that it will be near impossible for him to find another job and his family temporary downshifting to adjust to the lost income looks like becoming a permanent downward spiral, Man-su develops a creative, complex and violent plan to relaunch his career within the brutal capitalist system he finds himself in. His aim to become the provider for his family and give his children the life chances they deserve. How much will he be able to rely on Miri and the children to remain loyal to him as he proceeds to the execute of his plans and plans some executions.  

No Other Choice is a beautifully directed and photographed dystopic film for our times. Based on the late Richard Westlake's 1997 novel The Axe (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176811.The_Ax),  co-writer and director shows us how the American Dream has become the Korean Dream, at least economically. And whether in the USA or in Korea - Westlake seems to have foreseen that we all live in world made for and then by people like Donald Trump, his family and entourage, where our market economy and then our society are increasingly dominated by the transactional, stripped of highflying liberal idealism and the old legal and ethical norms it somewhat unevenly applied.  

Whether domestically or internationally, it is winning that counts. Violence may be one of the means justified by the end as long as it leads to success for your family, your professional career and a certain stability within the overall system. 

This is not a system without rules and not a system without ethics. Its rules are rough, brutal and direct. In its honesty, Trumpianism which owes much in its outlook on the world to the German philosopher and legal scholar of the Weimar Republic, the Hitler Regime and then postwar Germany Carl Schmitt (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/), poignantly exposes some of the hypocrisy of what went before. "No Other Choice" demonstrates this brilliantly in places. This makes, at times, for highly uncomfortable viewing for the liberal democratic rule of law-abiding mindset. We shudder as we laugh. The landscape, the photography, the classical music are skilfully designed to heighten the viewers frisson and cognitive dissonance as the action unfolds. 

Due in no small measure the excellent ensemble of actors led by Lee Byung-hun as Man Su and  Son Ye-jin as his wife the tight rope the film walks between thriller, drama, slapstick and comedy succeeds. 

Park Chan-wo dedicates his film to the Greek filmmaker Costas Garvas who in 2005 made a French film adaptation of the Axe, Le Couperet, with actor Jose Garcia. But his own rendering of the story is outstanding and timely in its own right. I recommend it highly.