`Women on the Sixth Floor' review: Gentle comedy, maid in France
07.10.11
Jean-Louis and Suzanne have a life without questions.
The apartment they live in (it’s been in the family for years), the work Jean-Louis does (the same work his father and grandfather did before him, naturally) – the patterns of their existence are set.
But then Jean-Louis begins to question all of it.
What jolts him out of his complacency are, as this delightful French film’s title tells us, “The Women on the Sixth Floor.” Because, in this grand old French apartment building, that’s where the live-in maids for all the different families have their rooms hidden away.
For generations, there’s been a strict upstairs/downstairs division. But then, one day, Jean-Louis walks up a few flights. And sees his own bourgeois assumptions from a very different perspective.
Sweet as it is, “The Women on the Sixth Floor” could sometimes use a slightly heightened perspective itself.
At times, the characters tend toward cultural stereotypes (the inhibited, upper-class characters are all French; the life-affirming lower-class ones all Spanish). And even for a film set in 1960, Jean-Louis’ wife is treated rather cavalierly, her character given short shrift.
Source: The Star-Ledger - NJ.com