Critic’s rating: ★★★½
(104 minutes; PG-13)
The title alone probably telegraphs a thing or two about this French production, a vehicle for another blue-chip performance — this time half comic, half dramatic — by versatile screen veteran Isabelle Huppert. And the poster art makes it even more clear: We’re about to see a funny charmer that arrives bearing, and maybe burying, a few serious social issues.
“Mama Weed” might be thought of as an accidental caper film. Patience (Huppert), a solidly middle-class Parisian citizen with a semi-secret past in crime, is an intellectual, a fluent Arabic speaker with a PhD who makes her daily bread as a police translator. A widow for two decades, she’s desperate to dig herself out of money trouble — brought on by her late husband’s debts, the ever-increasing cost of city living, exorbitant charges for her mother’s (Liliane Rovere) nursing-home accommodations, and the needs of two congenial twentysomething daughters (Iris Bry, Rebecca Marder) who could use some financial help.
Stumbling onto a golden opportunity to grab a piece of drug-deal action, Patience decides to masquerade as a mysterious, elusive Moroccan crime boss who dispenses real, not pretend, loads of hash in exchange for big piles of Euros. Nobody buys her act, exactly, but they do business with her anyway. Of course, she devises clever methods for transporting her illegal goods and stashing her stacks.
Will her part-time lover, a French police chief (Hippolyte Girardot) and all-around nice guy who’s a single father, discover her true identity? Will the owners of the stolen hash catch up to her and mete out terrible revenge? Close calls in a spirited cat-and-mouse game, the fumbling, bumbling efforts of a pair of low-level criminals named Scotch and Cocoa Puffs, and a profitable friendship with Patience’s wily Chinese landlord (Nadja Nguyen) figure into a joyride that’s fun, funny, and occasionally suspenseful.
Director Jean-Paul Salome leavens his frothy confection with several quick sequences that are charming and telling. While standing on her balcony, Patience watches fireworks explode in the case as she suddenly, silently, hits on her money-making plan, the realization of her nefarious plan slowly spreading across her face. In her car, singing along vigorously to pop music while at a red light, she exchanges glances with a motorcyclist, who pokes good-natured fun at her and then makes a gesture suggesting that he knows what she’s up to. He doesn’t, of course, but she expresses shock, momentarily believing that someone has discovered her secret.
Yes, crime pays for Patience — and for the patient, one presumes — and Salome handily tidies up nearly all of his protagonist’s dangers and distractions.
Still, one can’t help but wonder what kind of film Salome might have come up with had he delved a bit more deeply into the serious matters pressing in at the edges of his movie — social issues around drug dependency, financial struggles that force the working poor to take desperate measures, difficulties around access to quality healthcare for the elderly.
What he HAS delivered is a light, amusing treat buoyed by a smart script and yet another accomplished turn from the elegant Huppert. What’s not to like?
(Fun fact: Huppert and Salome are reteaming for French thriller “The Sitting Duck.”)
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