Chic!

Helene (Marina Hands – 'Tell No-one') works for a Fashion House that of the capricious Alicia Ricosi (Fanny Ardant). Ms Ricosi is putting together her new collection when her lover deserts her – she needs inspiration to work and so has an artistic hissy fit and gives up. Helene is a fixer and so has to find a new muse. Her boss is a quintessential coward and bully and swerves all blame in a master class of deflection leaving Helene to take the rap – hence she is a complete cow to nigh on everyone else.

She also has a nice house that she is getting landscaped but decides to fire the gardener just because she feels like being a biatch. Well fate has a way of bringing the most unlikely of souls together and as the sands of time run out for the new collection so does Alicia meet the recently fired gardener and voilà a muse is born. What follows is a story of ups and downs, lies, cover ups and a pretension smörgåsbord – that is actually very funny in places.

Director Jérôme Cornuau has made a film that is both original and charming. His main man is not classically good looking either and I very much appreciated that an ordinary man could stir emotions like he does here. The laughs are worth waiting for but there are also other issues examined here, that of career progression over integrity, idol worship, the fickleness of fashion and the complete duplicity that is concomitant with those that move in high places. This is a good ride though and has Gallic warmth underneath the well observed pretension. A bit of a love story, a bit of a fashionista expose and a bit of drama; not a bad effort at all and one I can wholeheartedly recommend.