Populaire - 2012

It's a French film, very nice. I liked it all, but the ending. A man is very determined to make young Rose (who left her father's home to be modern and feminist and get a job to maintain herself) the best typist of France. Rose Pamphyle (Déborah François) accepts mostly because she likes Louis (Romain Duris). A character I like a lot is Marie (Bérénice Bejo), Louis' ex girlfriend, now married to Bob, who likes both him and Rose :-) She loved Louis, but he went to war without a promise, and Bob offered her a life together, and she made her choice and sticks to it; Bob loves her, they have two children and she's happy now, feeling loved. Louis has Rose exercise every day, a lot. He has Marie giving her piano lessons, and she wins the competition in her part of France, then she also beats the French champion, and at this point Louis leaves her. He says he only wanted her to win, and slept with her because that was what she needed, and that without the competition nothing would have happened between them. He speaks so because he thinks he can't help her anymore, and believes she's good enough to win the world competition and beat the US champion. Rose goes on alone, appearing on tv and papers, magazine covers and signing autographs. When the world competition starts, she gets to the final stage: the finalists are of course France and USA. She wins a round, the American girl wins the second one. At this point Rose walks backstage. Louis has arrived to make peace and tell her he loves her. Love wins, of course, but the competition's not over, and what does she do? She takes the old typewriter her father sent to her, because it is a sentimental move, and she always said she didn't like the new one with the keys so close. She uses the old one and wins, which is absurd because after you've spent months training with a 'small' keyboard you can't be that fast with a 'big' one without even a minute to get again used to it, but it's not enough. The keys stuck together as it often happened with those typewriters, so imagine: the American girl goes on while Rose has to separate each key before she can type again, and yet she wins, which is stupid because those seconds lost should have made her lose. The two girls were close to each other, both really fast, so the tiniest problem should have cost her the title. So, stupid ending, but otherwise very nice film.


In Italy: Tutti pazzi per Rose