“The Women on the 6th Floor” is a well-crafted, charming French variant on “The Help.” It re-creates a period in the early 1960s when it was a status symbol for prosperous Parisians to employ Spanish maids. The film doesn’t blaze adventurous new trails, but it dramatizes the stories of those underappreciated servants with an engaging mix of romance, droll humor and upstairs-downstairs social consciousness.
Jean-Louis (the superb character actor Fabrice Luchini ) is a finicky middle-aged stockbroker who lives a pampered, monotonous life with his elitist wife, Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain). When Madame henpecks the family’s elderly domestic into resigning, the apron goes to hyper-resourceful Maria (Natalia Verbeke). She moves to a cold-water bedroom on the sixth floor with the other Spanish housekeepers who work for the apartment building’s tenants.
As Jean-Paul finds himself yearning for a vibrant proletarian lifestyle, Luchini makes his soul-searching a bittersweet emotional journey. The stuffy milquetoast is on a quest for a meaningful relationship, but he’s awkward to the last.
The finale gives the culture clash a Cinderella ending that’s pretty farfetched, but isn’t that what frothy French fantasies are all about?
Unrated. 1 hour, 46 minutes. At the Esquire.
