Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.
A charming but formulaic class-divide romantic comedy set in early 1960s Paris. The premise of an uptight bourgeois discovering warmth and vitality through working-class Spanish immigrants has a pleasant execution bolstered by likable performances, particularly Fabrice Luchini's comic rigidity. However, the plot follows predictable beats — repressed man awakened by vivacious outsiders, cold wife contrasted with warm love interest — without much subversion. Cinematography is competent but unremarkable, the kind of bright, unambitious staging typical of mainstream French comedies. The ending resolves too neatly and sentimentally, offering little surprise. Novelty is modest: the Spanish maid community adds some cultural texture, but the overall conception is familiar.