Class war: The party’s over, but trouble is just getting started in this French comedy
A summer holiday turns tricky in this comedy that proved a hit at this year’s Alliance Francaise French Film Festival.
A hit at this year’s Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, Antony Cordier’s The Party’s Over! (Classe Moyenne) is a lively comedy drama that casts a wry eye on class difference.
Laure Calamy’s Nadine and Elodie Bouchez’s Laurence come to loggerheads during the summer when fading French movie star Laurence and her banker husband Philippe (Laurent Lafitte) come to stay at their country retreat with their beautiful brat of a daughter Garance (Noee Abita) and her fledgling lawyer boyfriend Mehdi (Sami Outalbali).
Mehdi ultimately becomes an intermediary when the property’s caretakers, Nadine (Calamy) and her husband Tony (Ramzy Bedia), demand more money for their services. Still, we never imagine the drama that is set to happen.
Bouchez and Lafitte operate as perfect comic foils to the working-class caretakers with Calamy particularly delivering a high-octane performance as she takes matters into her own capable hands.
I spoke to both Calamy and Bouchez before the film’s Cannes premiere last year. Calamy is certainly a huge comedic talent.
“It was all in the script,” she says. “It was a real pleasure to play the situation that gets worse and worse and also with actors I really love. Ramzy and Laurent were so funny that sometimes it was very difficult to become serious. We had to really stay focused.”
The idea that Nadine and Tony are the good guys (the poor) and Laurence and Philippe are the full-of-themselves and self-preoccupied rich is ultimately turned on its head. The caretakers want money just as much.
“I mean, you quickly realise that each character has its share of mediocrity and that money doesn’t make people glorious, not at all,” Calamy says.
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I note that Nadine likes to take control. “That’s ok with me too!” she chuckles. “You make people laugh and get excited.”
The naturally rambunctious Calamy is particularly funny in her scenes with Bouchez, like when they are together in a jacuzzi, or when they disagree about window cleaning. When did she discover that she was clever at comedy?
“I discovered this talent when I did a lot of theatre,” Calamy says. “There’s this immediate reward to have a direct reaction from the audience.”
Calamy, 51, became famous later in life, a little over a decade ago after she appeared in the Netflix series Call My Agent! She followed up with two international hits, My Donkey, My Lover & I and Full Time.
“It was a happy strike with Call My Agent! but I wasn’t expecting it,” she admits. “I was not expecting what is still happening now, with drama too. I don’t know how it would have affected me at a younger age, but it didn’t take away my fear and my doubts. I now play women who are very assertive, women who speak loud, but I’m not necessarily very confident in myself. Certainly, having so much work makes me a lot happier as I am getting older.”
Next month she will be seen in the movie version of Call My Agent! with the likes of George Clooney and Lafitte, both playing cameos of themselves. It seems that Calamy’s Noemie character has had a promotion from being a lowly assistant. “I’m a development manager,” she bellows in the trailer.
“It was very moving and joyful to all be together again after five years,” Calamy told France’s Telematin chat show. “Honestly, I am so happy about everything we experienced and filmed!”
Calamy first saw Bouchez in Andre Techine’s award-winning 1994 film Wild Reeds. She loved watching while sitting on the couch with her mother. Bouchez was 21 at the time and won the best newcomer Cesar (French Oscar) then continued her success with The Dreamlife of Angels. After raising her two sons with partner Thomas Bangalter (from the now disbanded electronic music duo Daft Punk) and while still working in the theatre, she recently made a major return to movies, also appearing in Beating Hearts and Enzo.
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As for achieving fame at an early age, she says: “It wasn’t difficult, because I was lucky to be able to play young people when I was young and in beautiful movies.”
Coming from a working-class background in the outer Parisian suburb of Montreuil and having been a well-known movie star for many years, the 53-year-old understands both sides of the equation in The Party’s Over!. She admits she was interested in exploring the working-class divide with Cordier, who she has enjoyed working previously with three times.
It was her first time acting with Calamy. How was that?
“Laure’s fun, very funny, very loud,” Bouchez replies with a chuckle. “For all the actors it was a jubilation to play those characters, because there’s a lot to play with. They’re all archetypes but there are surprises.”
They are all scheming in their own way so are reduced to the same level? “Yes, exactly. It’s very interesting.”
Most importantly the film is a lot of fun, and audiences loved it at the first screening in Cannes, as Bouchez concedes. “We’re not used to that, to laugh in Cannes and the people we’ve been talking to are happy about that.”
What does she think about Philippe wanting to be in charge and his jealousy of Laurence’s fame?
“Laurence had a moment of glory, but not anymore,” she says. “But, yeah, he’s the kind of man who says to his wife, ‘You don’t need to work. We don’t need that’. But it’s not about that. It’s about just working and being able to do what she likes to do.”
Meanwhile, Garance, now an aspiring actress, has chosen a different name to that of her mother in her plight for fame.
“I don’t want to be known as the daughter of,” she says.
Has it been difficult for Bouchez’s sons to deal with being the offspring of famous parents?
“It must have been and it will probably again be difficult sometimes, but they’re going through something that I don’t really know because my parents were not doing anything artistic. But they are okay with it. They’re proud of it.”
The Party’s Over! (Classe Moyenne) is in cinemas from August 27. The movie version of Call My Agent! streams on Netflix from September 10.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema. She is a voting member of the Lumiere Award.
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