Suggesting from its opening credits the idea of a zero-sum game, My Piece of the Pie is slightly more allegorical than it should be – this type of Trojan horse filmmaking works when it doesn’t hit us over the head until late in the film. Here, its agenda is clear, we know what its doing even as we are purchasing a ticket and it continues with little surprises all the way through.
This is not to say filmmaker Cedric Klapish’s latest is without charm and wit. Following a single mother named France (Karin Viard) who loses her job working in a seaside factory, she becomes a housekeeper to a trader who may indeed be a “traitor” to his own country. Klapish, whose best known in the U.S. for the wonderful L’Auberge Espangnole has treaded this ground before: telling stories of those forced to compete in a globalized economy that threatens to erase cultural values of hard work and productivity. But that’s the risk of fighting for your piece of the pie.
In no uncertain terms, in fact in English, Steve (Gilles Lellouche), who is responsible for the factory closing, an unhappy, cocky and brash hedge fund manager is told ‘business is not a sport for gentlemen,’ and he isn’t one. Going on vacation with a model, he expects to sleep with her fairly soon and when she tells him he can’t because she feels nothing for him, he sulks. Klapish does him, as us, a favor by not filming what may have happened next, my guess it involved him crying. To be 35, rich, handsome and have beautiful women tell you ‘no.’ Perhaps this was one of those 99 problems Jay-Z raps about.
It is difficult to sympathize with a villain, one who could have easily been L’Aurbege Espangole’s Xavier had he not turned and run the other direction away from a sterile office park and into poverty as a writer (as we see in its sequel, Russian Dolls).
My Piece of the Pie isn’t as rosy and optimistic as its title may seem. While it’s relevant and timely in its portrayal of social disconnect – especially in an era of disorienting globalization, austerity, and the fear of a breakdown in French cultural identity 13 years after the adoption of the Euro – it is not a slice-of-life film and, in fact, struggles to find its footing in any kind of reality.
Klapish’s work has grappled with the urban experience of Parisians at home and abroad struggling in a city important to both domestic and global commerce to identify and reclaim their cultural relevancy and place. Perhaps these themes are too apparent, and while there is some joy and liberation in certain moments, Klapish has made this type of film with more warmth, affection and subtly in the past.
My Piece of the Pie is currently screening in New York at the IFC Center and is available on Video On Demand.