David Ecklein According to the description and critical reviews, one would think that "My Piece of the Pie" is about class issues, and how a single mother (France), dropped from the payroll because her company in Dunkirk has been wrecked by financial manipulation in high places, fights back.Most of the movie is a set-up for the hasty and unpleasant conclusion. This set-up is very well done (therefore 3 stars), and one has expectations for a satisfactory resolution. The heroine seeks temporary employment as a housekeeper in Paris, and near the conclusion discovers that her wealthy and self-centered employer (Steve) not only has taken advantage of her sexually, but was actually one of the financial wizards responsible for destroying the Dunkirk company she worked for originally.At this point, the tale goes downhill very fast and crashes at the bottom.The way heroine France fights back is to impulsively kidnap Steve's adorable son Alban, who has been entrusted to her care. Furthermore, when Steve arrives with police to rescue the son, she and other Dunkirk workers resist and physically assault the young financier. Not only does she break the law, but her former co-workers will certainly be in legal hot water as well. Why would they become involved? Kidnapping children, whatever the rationale, is a particularly heinous crime. The darkness of this ending eclipses any lessons about class conflict or capitalist predation, and deflects attention from Steve and his questionable antics. In my opinion, this plot needs major rework on its conclusion to merit film critic Amy Taubin's curious rating as "Brilliant Social Satire".

movie reviews Leftie social comedy.Are there any French movie directors that aren't left of Che Guevara? This leftie social comedy was entertaining to me because I liked the bad guys--the British Hedge fund founder was priceless.Although well filmed and watchable--the leftie political stuff comes at you like a non stop jack hammer and mostly ruins it. It is the story of driven greedy financiers and the out of luck (all good of course) workers of companies closed by these ruthless villains.The working class is represented by Karin Viard playing France LeRoi * (The King) and the hedge fund types by Gilles Lellouche as Steve Delarue * (literally from the street). France is thrown out of work and attempts suicide when her company is taken over and looted by the financiers including Delarue. She gets herself together and lands a job as a house keeper for Delarue. He eventually beds her and she overhears him bragging about it on the phone--angry and hurt (they have fallen for each other) she kidnaps his son and forces him to come pick him up and see the human damage his financial deals cause.In the end the workers attack the police who have arrested France and take after Delarue to lynch him.Even though a comedy this movie is 50 shades too political to really enjoy unless you do what I did and cheer on the villains. For this reason it got a 4.

rowmorg Karin Viard is a major star, and Lellouche comes across well too in this social comedy, which is not really a satire. Viard is a girl of the soil who worked in a solid factory all her life, only to have it ruined by resurgent China and the container business. She tries to kill herself, and her three daughters and sister rally round her until she decides to try her luck in Paris, at a school for cleaners where she pretends to be foreign. She ends up working for a complete tosser, in fact the stock speculator who destroyed her factory without giving a thought to the workers. It takes her a long time to find out, and when she does, she is in bed with the jerk and they've just had tremendous sex, something he of course jokes about on the phone, overheard by her. When his toddler son disappears she has the idea of kidnapping him off to Dunkerque to get the tosser over there and face the music. Both actors perform extremely well and the film sweeps you away with the goodness of "France" and the cynical wickedness of "Steve". Thoroughly recommended.

vostf I had not great expectations for 'Ma part du gâteau'. France, 42, raising her 4 daughters alone, loses her job and goes on to work as a maid for a big bad trader. The premise seemed interesting and Klapisch certainly knows how to tell simple stories in a lively manner. But the title is really dumb and dull and I was unable to remember it for the couple of weeks prior to release. Klapisch's trademark is to use simple titles borrowed from popular phrases, but My Piece of Cake/Taking My Cut is not a visually stimulating simple idea, it's only a flat commonplace.Directors back in the Studio System could moan about not being responsible for a bad title. Klapisch, after a decade of well-deserved success, enjoys total creative control, so the title is his mistake. And it perfectly stands for the big flaws, the failure to build up something really engaging on this interesting premise.Lazy comes to my mind, yet that may be too harsh on Klapisch. He excels at brisk light comedies and may well have gone out of his league here in this attempt at social satire. If you look back at Klapisch movies, starting with 'Le Péril Jeune', you realize their strength is simplicity and rhythm. He tried his style on something more serious and under delivers. Worse, he totally misses the mark.Lazy is however the right word for an 'auteur' who earned his spot at the top, with the power to shoot whatever he wants. OK, fashionable 'auteurs' like Cédric Klapisch end up working with too many yes-men, leaving them with little challenging creative opportunities, but that's laziness all the same. Laziness to come up with such a flimsy script on such a challenging subject matter, and laziness to cast the bland Gilles Lellouche as the hyper-realistic financial shark that should have been too fascinating for our own good.If it's not laziness, that means Klapisch has risen to his level of incompetence and will only be able to dish out the same youthful light comedies again and again.