Thierry Klifa’s latest film, presented Out of Competition at the last Cannes Film Festival and released in theaters on October 29, aims to make audiences laugh with a story heavily inspired by the Bettencourt affair. The result is divisive, even if the performances of the two main characters, played by Isabelle Huppert and Laurent Lafitte, are widely acclaimed.
The richest woman in the world, with her hand on the loot…
The title (and subtitle) of the latest film by director, journalist, and screenwriter Thierry Klifa (Les rois de la piste, Tout nous sépare, Une vie à t’attendre…), presented Out of Competition at the last Cannes Film Festival and released in theaters on Wednesday, October 29, sets the tone: this comedy, loosely based on the Bettencourt affair, is not subtle.
Comedy rather than tragedy
Rather than faithfully retelling a true story that has already been the subject of a Netflix documentary series (more soberly titled The Bettencourt Affair) released in 2023, this time the aim is to make people laugh… The film thus chooses to focus on comedy rather than tragedy, even though the latter is also present in this proven case of abuse of weakness. The victim was Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to L’Oréal, who was considered the richest woman in the world by Forbes for ten years and died at the age of 94 on September 21, 2017.
For even if the authors invoke “respect for privacy, the memory of the dead and the reputation of the living” and the fact that “their subjective view of the events reported is mixed with elements of pure fiction from their imagination,” everyone (except those who have lived in a cave for the last ten years) will have understood the film’s source of inspiration.
The heart of the script?
Played by Isabelle Huppert, always impeccable in the role of a stuffy upper-class woman, Marianne Farrère is the wealthy heiress to a veritable empire, the cosmetics group Windler, the cinematic double of the world’s leading luxury goods company, L’Oréal.
Abuse of weakness
Like the real Liliane Bettencourt, the jaded heroine falls for a character who is brilliant, impertinent, and completely unscrupulous, the photographer and writer Pierre-Alain Fantin, played by the talented Laurent Lafitte, who himself played another wealthy figure on the big screen for Netflix, a certain Bernard Tapie. Everyone will of course recognize his “real-life” model: the intriguing François-Marie Banier, sentenced in 2016 to four years’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of €375,000 for abuse of weakness.
Pierre-Alain Fantin’s antics will thus shake up the daily life of this “poor, wealthy but disenchanted grandmother,” a revisited version of “the poor little rich girl.”
The entertainer, with hints of a platonic gigolo (who prefers men, incidentally), promises his new friend to help her “unlock everything that is locked inside her,” while she responds with gratitude, “thanks to you, it’s as if I’m living again.”
The affair could have ended there if it hadn’t turned into reprehensible behavior, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the “unworthy” old lady…
When you love, you don’t count the cost…
As a true believer in the adage “when you love, you don’t count the cost,” Marianne Farrère showers her protégé with financial largesse, much to the displeasure of her husband Guy (played by André Marcon) and her daughter, alias Marina Foïs (alias the real Françoise Bettencourt), whose demure appearance and thick glasses are unambiguous clues.
The butler (Raphaël Personnaz) is a modern version of the one in Downton Abbey, loyal among the loyal and protecting his employers better than anyone else…
Except that one element complicates the scenario, namely the political past of Marianne Farrère’s husband, which the family has no desire to see splashed across the front pages… The troubled past of André Bettencourt, born in 1919 and deceased in 2007, had itself been mentioned in the media. In his twenties, he was a member of La Cagoule, a far-right movement (to which Eugène Schueller, the founder of L’Oréal, also belonged), and then collaborated with the anti-Semitic newspaper La Terre Française. He later referred to these as youthful mistakes.
A divisive version
Ultimately, it is easy to imagine that this version of the Bettencourt affair will not be to the liking of her surviving relatives, even though the director speaks of “a moving family story, with its secrets, its buried past, and a historical context that is still too little explored in France: that of these great industrial families, whose power was partly built on shady dealings, notably collaboration.”
“The famous ‘based on a true story’ always seems to be a promise to future viewers. But actors find freedom in fiction. Here, it’s about bringing out an emotional truth, our own, that of the performers, which is more intimate, and offering a different perspective,” said Isabelle Huppert.
Faced with this treatment, which is deliberately subjective, critics are very divided on its qualities.
Not at all convinced, Télé Loisirs describes the result as “too often turning into an outrageous farce.”
A film that is more entertaining than profound…
Le Figaro describes the film as “more entertaining than profound” with “a very rigid Isabelle Huppert.”
On the other hand, Télérama praises “a drama among the upper middle class with precise staging” and an “impeccable Huppert-Lafitte duo.”
Le Parisien finds that Thierry Klifa’s feature film provokes malicious laughter and that Isabelle Huppert’s performance is “as admirable as ever.”
In the style of Molière?
Frankly enthusiastic, AvoirAlire.com believes that “Thierry Klifa loves (great) actors” and that “it shows!” It sees the director’s opus as “a film that in many ways recalls the best of Ozon’s cinema,” “a lively and enjoyable comedy-drama about the revisited scandal of the Liliane Bettencourt affair,” which has become “a joyful subject, without ever mocking the characters and situations, except of course for the exuberant and unbearable photographer.”
Equally enthusiastic, France Info believes that “Thierry Klifa introduces a human dimension to the characters of a real story that has been put through the media mill, and revisits the social film by attacking it from the top of the ladder.” In its view, “neither caricatural nor moralizing, The Richest Woman in the World is a joyful and committed film that depicts a milieu, but above all universal human dramas and passions, in the manner of Molière.”
Except that, unlike Harpagon, the richest woman in the world much prefers to have fun than to protect her money…
Thierry Klifa is not the first to allude to the L’Oréal empire without mentioning it directly: long before him, in 2016, Frédéric Beigbeder released L’Idéal, which was adapted from his novel Au secours, pardon (2007).
Read also > Tapie, the Netflix series depicting the flashy and extravagant years of the eighties
Featured photo: © Manuel Moutier
