Review of Mama, There's a Man in Your Bed

Why does this film lift my spirits when I am in the lowest of moods? It always does, and has done so for 25 years. I watch it at least once a year. Daniel Auteuil has the most expressive face. Firmine Richard, an untried ingenue when she made this, just lights up the room when she smiles. (Auteuil was brilliant as Ugolin, the dim innocent peasant of those masterpieces of French cinema - Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, based on the Pagnol novels.) Auteuil's face is just as expressive in his role as the duped boss in this fast moving light hearted farce, where he plays the blinkered and pompous chief executive of a multi-national yoghurt producer who develops an unlikely relationship with Juliette, the office cleaner. She is a woman raising 5 children single handedly in a dump of a flat, while working nights and surviving on minimum wages and less sleep. Big, black and beautiful and totally unlike Romuald's chic, over-indulged adulterous wife, Juliette represents woman with all her emotional strength and practical virtue. The contrasts are multiple. Juliette is poor. He is rich. She is French African and black. He is slightly built and white. She is working class. He is Bourgeois. He is blind to the world he inhabits and the scoundrels who surround him. She is good, strong, independent minded and wise. This is the sweetest of films that has the extraordinary ability to reach out and give you a hug.