My Piece of the Pie | Film review

France is in trouble. Not the country France, but a working-class woman named France (Karin Viard) who lives in the city of Dunkirk. At the start of Cédric Klapisch’s ambitious romance-satire, this spirited gal loses her job and attempts suicide. The man semiresponsible for her plight is Steve (Gilles Lellouche), a London-based French stockbroker whose shady megadealings resulted in the shuttering of the factory where France worked for years. Her let’s-end-it-all overreaction aside, France is determined to overcome this crisis, and through a number of coincidences—call it karma, or simply contrivance—she ends up working as Steve’s maid, after he moves to Paris to start his own firm.

From here, My Piece of the Pie settles into a light romcom groove: Steve’s kid from a previous relationship appears on his doorstep; France agrees to take care of him, so dad can do his dastardly business. It’s clear the two social and emotional opposites are headed for a roll in the hay. These scenes are all well performed and compelling, especially when the action is confined to Steve’s obscenely affluent apartment. But Klapisch shows his hand after the film takes a left turn into some call-to-arms shenanigans—there’s a reason she’s named France—that feel egregiously out of place. A Euro gloss on Pretty Woman suddenly turns into Occupy Gaul.