Populaire

Plot synopsis:
Set in 1958–1959, Populaire focuses on Rose Pamphyle (Déborah François), who lives with her widowed father and is destined to marry a son of the local mechanic. Rose travels out of town and applies for a secretarial job with an insurance agency run by Louis Échard (Romain Duris). Louis learns that Rose can type with extraordinary speed -- using only two fingers -- and he tells her to compete in a speed-typing competition if she wants the job.
While Rose makes the finals, she ultimately loses her first typing competition. Louis begins training Rose to become the fastest typist in the world. He makes a bet with his best friend, Bob Taylor -- who is married to his old sweetheart, Marie -- that Rose can win the regional competition.
Louis begins to train Rose at his home, but he sets strict rules to prevent others from knowing that Rose is staying in his boyhood bedroom. He begins to teach her to type with all ten fingers and Louis insists she take piano lessons (taught by Marie) to strengthen her fingers. As she struggles to learn to type with ten fingers, Louis encourages her, colour-coding the keys on her typewriter and teaching her better posture. As the seasons change, she excels and Louis and Rose become close friends.
Rose wins her second typing competition, becoming the fastest in her home region of Lower Normandy. It becomes obvious to Louis' friends that Louis and Rose are romantically interested in each other, but Louis insists that a coach mustn't distract his student. They travel together to Paris and the night before the French national competition, Louis and Rose announce their love to one another and make love.
Competing against the current national champion, Rose makes it to the finals, but struggles under the pressure. Before her final match, Louis tells Rose that he had been lying and that he has secretly been recording that her typing speed is regularly faster than her opponent's best record. Angered by his lie, Rose is enraged into winning. Rose is ecstatic at winning and flashes Louis a big smile from on stage. After initially being elated, Louis begins to feel inadequate for somewhat ambiguous reasons. He abandons her and their training sessions.
Rose stays in Paris and becomes a French celebrity, endorsed by a major typing firm and begins using their newest typewriter. She never forgets Louis and calls him regularly, although Louis never answers the phone. Louis tries to move on, but is generally depressed and feels inadequate. Rose begins to move on and is soon in New York at the world typing competition.
While Rose starts the world competition in New York, Louis struggles with his own feelings. He reaches out to Marie and asks why she chose Bob over him. She says she didn't: Louis chose to be second place. Louis explains that he could never give Rose the smile and happiness the she had when she won in Paris -- the same smile that he saw on Marie on her wedding day to Bob. Marie says, "I was smiling because I felt loved."
Louis realises he needs to overcome his own feelings of inadequacy and flies to New York to support Rose in the international typing competition. He arrives just before the second round of the finals ends. As the judges announce the results, Rose is behind and struggling. She runs back stage to fetch her old typewriter, and Louis confronts her and professes his love. They kiss.
Rose goes on stage for the last round - seemingly energised by love. She races ahead in the final match. About half way in, her typewriter jams. She is too fast for the typewriter. She quickly recovers and races ahead again, winning the competition to be the World's Fastest Typist. Louis walks on stage and kisses her, ending the film on the two holding hands and the audience cheering.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Whereas it was the silent movies of the 1920s in the case of the former, the latter sets its sights on the crowd-pleasing Hollywood comedies of the 1950s and 60s, a fact clearly evident right from its animated opening credits which look like something straight out of a Billy Wilder movie.Then, movies were much simpler and sweeter, and indeed one should similarly expect the same of 'Populaire'.
A classic rom-com that pits the slightly naïve 21-year-old village girl Rose Pamphyle (Deborah Francois) with her dapper city boss Louis (Romain Duris) to whom she is secretary to, it follows a pretty straightforward trajectory built around the world of competitive speed typing, so if you're looking for any surprises in the storytelling, then you're likely to be disappointed.But what it lacks in novelty, it certainly makes for up in dollops of charm, so much so that we're willing to guarantee that you'll find much truth in its hyperbolic marketing tagline that proclaims it "the most enchanting romantic comedy since Amelie".
Their spirited repartee is also thanks to a witty and engaging script, which pays close and sharp attention to the evolving dynamic between its characters.Just as well-observed is the sport of competitive speed-typing, which plays a central role in the evolving relationship between Rose and Louis.
Rather than give up on the otherwise dreamy and absent-minded Rose, Louis recognises her single uncanny gift of typing very quickly, prompting him to propose an unusual arrangement in which he trains her for competitions in exchange for keeping her job as his secretary.
Roinsard, who also co-wrote the script with Daniel Presley and Romain Compingt, combines detailed set and costume design by Sylvie Olive and Charlotte David with a classy score by Rob and Emmanuel d'Orlando and classic French oldies from the likes of Jacqueline Boyer, Jack Ary and Les Chausettes Noires, the effect of all these various elements making for a remarkably rich and authentic period portrait.Especially as modern-day films revel in greater shades of grey, it is refreshing to see a movie whose pleasures are so elemental and yet deeply enjoyable.
"Populaire" harks back to the days of the Doris Day rom-coms – even as it also pays homage to other classic films of the same era, most notably Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" – offering a delightfully buoyant time brimming with wit, humour and passion.
Who would have thought a film about a woman training to be a speed-typing world champion could be so much fun?
Plus, while I am not sure about this, I assume there never has been any sort of international speed-typing competition and I KNOW if there had been one, they wouldn't have been celebrities like the folks in this film.
However, I kind of liked this, as it was a bit silly and added to the kooky charm of the film.The movie begins with Rose (Déborah François) leaving her small town and going to the city to get a job as a secretary.
However, her grouchy boss, Louis (Romain Duris) hires her anyway, as he's VERY impressed by her typing.
I enjoyed it a lot even with its clichés (such as how Rose's father behaves late in the film).By the way, I looked it up and there really was a Japy typewriter company in France--it was not created for the film..
Rose learns by herself how to type using only two fingers and when she sees an advertisement for a secretary for the insurance agent Louis Échard (Romain Duris) in Lisieux, Lower Normandy, she immediately travels to city.Rose has a bad interview but she impresses Louis typing at very high speed.
He brings Rose to his home and she learns how to play piano to help her typing with Louis's childhood friend Marie Taylor (Bérénice Bejo) that is married with the American Bob Taylor (Shaun Benson).
"Populaire" is another sweet French romantic comedy, with stunning art direction and two of the most contemporary charming French actress, the unknown Déborah François and the lovely Bérénice Bejo that became internationally famous with "The Artist".
Any fan of romantic comedies will certainly love the clumsy but charming Rose Pamphyle.
Her boss employs her just to enter typing competitions."Populaire" tells a story of a girl who is shot down by almost everyone in her life.
Populaire (2012)A French comedy, set in the late 1950s, and centering around a typing championship?
I liked it a lot.The star here is the completely delightful Deborah Francois, who is cast and who acts a bit like an Audrey Hepburn type, which is a total compliment.
It's the story of a young and pretty typist so fast on her typewriter that her boss challenges her to win a few typing competitions.
So it's like every sports film with the bonus of a love story.
Plus, in it's subtle way, Populaire shows us what it was probably like to be a working girl in the late fifties.
It could have starred the actress from the past easily and feel the same.So while the viewer might know where this movie is leading (no real surprise here), it is the journey that makes it worthwhile.
The lead actors (Deborah François and Romain Duris) are carrying the whole movie and it turned way more thrilling that I could expect at first from a type machine competition movie.There is some sense of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady where love is in the air even though it wasn't the initial purpose.
When a young, pretty and innocent girl is coached by her boss, she turns into an accomplished and genuine beautiful Lady.If you're planning a nice movie sessionflick with your soulmate, without complicated plot or senseless violence and you want to ensure you'll finish smiling at the end, go for Populaire, worths it !!!.
You'll love Déborah François in the lead role, along with Romain Duris as a man who makes very odd facial expressions.
This film became an instant favorite of mine because it has all the right elements of a good romantic comedy.
Déborah François has great comedic timing, and Romain Duris as her leading man, wisely lets her take the lead.Were it not for a single love scene, I would say that this would have made an excellent family movie.
I needed a feel good movie and this movie was perfect.Set in the 1950 Romain Duris plays Louis Echard an insurance agent in need of a secretary.
What he finds is a beautiful but clumsy girl whose saving grace is her fast typing with 2 fingers.As the movie unfolds it just grabs holds and takes you on the journey to the World Championships in Speed Typing.I became an instant fan of Romain and want to play catch up on his movies.
This is a French romantic comedy, I enjoyed watching it but it also has some problems.
The good parts: The best part about the movie is the nice set design and the costumes.
The last 30 minutes are particularly laborious and give the impression that Roinsard didn't know where to go nor how to end his story.One could have also appreciated stronger and more developed supporting characters because the Duris-François duo, though effective and complementary, is a bit alone..
But to think that this was made as late as 2012 begs questions of values the production team and others involved (except perhaps for the actors, who would always appreciate a crust of bread.) And it begs a similar question about those who were rating it as highly as they did.The "girls", adult women, are treated as performing chimpanzees, set up to compete - in the final showdown indeed in a non-contact cat-fight, as speed typists, the acme and ultimate ambition for women in the man's world that is/was an office.
I suggest that you go into the film the same way that I did to increase your chances of getting similar satisfying result;)BriefyBeefyFilmSummary: This film is about a girl called Rose, her skill for typewriting and her relationship with her boss/trainer Louis.
Luckily Louis notices Rose' skill for typing and decides to pursue his chance of 'winning at something' by entering her in the regional typing competition.
The film captures perfectly the 60's romantic comedies spirit in everything: from the credits in the beginning, script, music, costumes and settings to direction and, of course, a happy ending.
Deborah Francois plays Rose Pamphyle, a pretty and pretty vacant Normandy girl who loves typing.
When she gets a secretarial role at an insurance agency, she enters into fraught relationship with her boss, Louis (Romain Duris).
Rose is devoted to her father, but he shows her no attention, while Louis is haunted by an unfulfilled former relationship, which has left him with a crippling "second-best" pathology.This makes the film sound deep, but really the main focus is on Rose's simple self-actualisation as a super-typist.
Lovely French rom-com underpinned by....fast typing.
Love soon enters the mix, resulting in complications.This French romantic-comedy is one with a glossy and polished feel, one with an unashamedly nostalgic view of the 1950's.
It's also one with a fairly typical plot trajectory for this kind of thing but I often find I am extremely forgiving of predictability in romantic-comedies so long as I care for the characters.
And in this case both of the central roles are very well played by regular French leading man Romain Duris and, especially, Déborah François in a lovely turn as the central heroine.
And I, for one was more than happy to spend time watching Déborah François type super-fast with a two-finger technique.
"Populaire" is finely crafted piece of junk that I could barely watch to the end; and watch it I did, but mostly in the same way that one is rubber-necking when passing a really bad car accident.While the sets and performances manage to give us a kitschy feel of the 60s, everything else falls flat on its face: the story is dull, predictable and forced to the same degree that "Armageddon" was forced.
In Armageddon, every time the story slows down too much there is a meteor shower, while in "Populaire" boredom is interrupted by senseless arguments between main protagonists - meteor showers of different kinds.Characters are ill-conceived, their motivations inexplicable, their actions everything but funny, and as a result, the film flows like a stale joke told by a three-year old who forgot the punch-line.Someone said that this is a "feel-good" film.
Even if we ignore the overly sexist world of this film in which men are gods and women are ordered around, we are still left with a sadistic boss who never manages to be likable, his little less psychotic secretary whose motivation is unclear to the very end and their family and friends who manage to stay boring despite suffering from severe mental problems.We never get to believe that the main protagonist really wishes to compete in the speed-typing.
None of those things make any sense in the film, we are just supposed to accept that speed-typing was a world-class event in the 60s (it was not), that your average boss is crazy about your winning a meaningless competition, and that women were aching to work as secretaries, while male bosses were naturally psychotic, and that all that was fun somehow.
In order to prove that he didn't just hire her for her good looks, he coaches her for typing competitions.
But because it would be a very short movie if they'd jumped their bones right there and then, the movie comes up with the plot device that monsieur le insurance agent wants to see his secretary, who can only type with two fingers, become world typing champion.If you can buy into that and enjoy fabulous production design, this movie is for you.
Another piece of delightful French cinematography, an entertaining romance-comedy with predictable twists and a happy ending that the viewer looks forward to and gratifies him/her fully.
And after all, "Populaire", nowhere near to matching wit and substance with "Pygmalion", is a colorful and impeccably styled romantic comedy, and a tad over-contrived.The two parallel, inseparable plot lines are small town girl Rose Pamphyle's success story in typing contests and her romance with boss and mentor middle-class businessman Louis Echard.
A small diversion, but an interesting subplot, is the latter's relationship with former girlfriend Marie who is now a wife and mother, being married to is good friend Bob, an American.The movie is predictable, but entertaining nonetheless.
This is our old friend Pygmalion with Duris as Higgins and Francois as Eliza except that instead of creating a lady he is creating a speed-typing champion.
For me, supporting actor Shaun Benson would have been ten times better in the Duris role because he has a built-in Gig Young type charm and wouldn't have had to work at it - and missed by a mile.
Looking round for the fun mutant monster pig French Horror flick Prey to give as an Easter gift to a friend,I decided to take a look at Prey's co-star Bérénice Bejo's credits.Spotting a credit that I had read a good amount of praise for from its screening on BBC4,I decided that it was a good time to find out how popular populaire is.The plot-France 1959:Wanting to get away from working in the local family shop and the marriage that her dad is pushing her to do, Rose Pamphyle decides to leave the small town behind and go to the big city in order to apply for a job as secretary to insurance agency boss Louis Échard.Sitting at a typewriter for the interview, Pamphyle types up a letter at lightning speed,which leads to Échard hiring Pamphyle on the spot.Seeing Pamphyle get into the rhythm of typing, Échard starts to think that Pamphyle could enter the contest/sport where the best (and fastest) typist in France is found.
Surrounding Pamphyle with praise as she enters the contest, Romain Duris gives a dashing performance as Échard by casing him in a shell of savvy confidence,which Duris cracks to show Échard wondering how far he should let his feelings for Pamphyle develop.Catching everyone by surprise with her typing skills,the stunning Déborah François gives an alluring performance as Pamphyle.Leaving the village behind, François gives Pamphyle a meek appearance which François splendidly peels away to paint Pamphyle with a fiery passion to do things her own way.Set just as the French New Wave was kicking off,co-writer/(along with Daniel Presley and Romain Compingt) director Régis Roinsard & cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman largely stay away from New Wave flashes, (although they do find room for a small tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo) to instead tap into the ultra glossy romantic Comedy/Drama movies of the early 60's.Backed by a sweet score from Emmanuel D'Orlando & "Robin" Coudert, (who is usually a fantastic Horror composer) Roinsard & Schiffman lavish the film with an immaculate,chic shine,from sweeping crane shots making the typing contest nail- biting set-pieces,to the ultra-stylised,candy coloured clothes and location vividly popping on the screen.For the blossoming romance between Échard & Pamphyle,the screenplay by Roinsard/ Presley and Compingt keep things largely light and fluffy,but link some great rough edges to keep things from being too sickly sweet,as Pamphyle's attempt to find her own path is found with a delightfully quirky sense of humour.Sliding the genre into the 60's Rom/Drama's,the writers keep a run on the breezy romance with an exciting Sports lap,which along with impressively making type writing look like a stadium-worthy event (!) also leads to Pamphyle discovering how populaire she is..
If you are a Mad Men fan, you will certainly recognize the style, those late 50s and early 60s.In this movie we can appreciate this typewriting world from a woman's point of view, specially this competition world (truth to be told I had no idea that there were these kind of competitions) in France and around the world.
Romain Duris is a well-known actor that has made many films in France (shame we don't know him that much), with him we have Déborah François, and when both are on-screen you can feel their chemistry (just try to watch the movie in French, pleaaaase).
Moreover, there is Bérénice Bejo, world known for being the female main character in the Oscar-winning movie "The Artist", who gives that touch of glamour to the film.To sum it up, it is a predictable story but who does not like these kind of stories?
A romantic comedy of the kind of cinema (chiefly from Hollywood) used to show in the fifties of last century and that is maybe why the plot takes place in the end of that decade.
After being hired by an insurance businessman she astonishes him by her extraordinary typing speed and being himself a competitive person he intends to make her a champion and leads her to take part in typewriting championships first in France and finally in New York.
Well, the story of a lone girl, raised by a single parent in the french country after WWII who learns typing and builds an extraordinary life is the subject of this movie but it's also the resume of my mother.
I was very moved by the parallels especially when Romain tells Rose that she's typing like an elephant!
Sure, the fashion looks happy and luminous as seen with 2K10 eyes but if you compare it with « American Graffiti », you'll understand quickly what it means to live in an « old » country !Romain is good here, all the more than for one time he does nearly a « bad » character !
What makes Pupulaire stands out is the fact that a relaxing, fun and highly charming film, can come out from such an utterly ordinary story, perhaps even dull.On the surface, we have a boss who develops an unusual obsession with an employee and does all he can not too sleep with her but...ensures she wins a typing championship.
A young woman who 'terrible' at work (not sexist of course because this movie is set in the 1950's) falls for an older boss.