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As the opening shot of his messy apartment makes clear, Jacques (Jean-Pierre Bacri) desperately needs someone to put his life in order. Newly separated from his wife (played by Catherine Breillat — who can blame him?), the grumpy middle-aged sad sack answers an ad for the housekeeper of the title. Enter needy, passive-aggressive Laura (Émilie Dequenne, the hard-luck case from Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s 1999 downer Rosetta) and a lot more untidiness into his life. Taking a rare break from period filmmaking and literary adaptations (Manon des sources, Germinal), director Claude Berri makes himself at home in this contemporary case of romantic anomie and desperate illusions. So does Laura, who in short order moves in with Jacques, shares his bed, and takes over his life. Will Berri point his movie in a sinister, Chabrolesque direction, or will he edge it toward the clarifying irony of a Rohmer moral tale? Bacri’s non-comprehending but good-natured loser and Dequenne’s ruthless innocent don’t fit well into either scenario, and in the end Berri’s film is as cluttered and deeply human as poor Jacques’s apartment. In French with English subtitles. (91 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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