Potiche

Potcihe is a perfume scented doodle, as fluffy and pretty as candyfloss, with as little substance. Set in 1977, Deneuve plays the bourgeois trophy wife of a draconian factory tycoon who gets the chance to embrace women's liberation when her husband is hospitalised, leaving her to run the family business. Gérard Depardieu shows up as a left-wing politician and possible love interest but the only weight he brings to proceedings is his own inertia.

Can this saccarine farce really be the work of the man who brought us Criminal Lovers and Swimming Pool? In Ozon’s last Deneuve collaboration, the wonderfully daft whodunit-musical 8 Women, his leading lady enjoyed a fumble on some shag carpeting with Fanny Ardant. In Potiche, Denuve's sex life is restricted to soft focus flash-backs with a younger actor. For five decades Deneuve's career has been a coquettish dance with the camera, but Ozon seems to see her as a dress-up doll. Perhaps that’s one taboo France’s enfant terrible is not prepared to break: pensioner nookie. [Jamie Dunn]