LastingAware
The greatest movie ever!
Cathardincu
Surprisingly incoherent and boring
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
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".
strawberrybear-818-862925
Apologies for the short review but I felt I needed to react to the few other reviews.I really loved the movie and recognised Klapish's style straight away. The actors act just right and give a really good depth to the characters. The dialogues are excellent and especially the conversations at the boring drinks with other financiers/traders were as if they were taken from my own experience! My only criticism, SPOILER, is that I thought the end was a bit too fast and a bit too much of a shortcut. I am not sure if it is laziness but a few more minutes would have been good.That said the fact I didn't want it to end just shows how enjoyable this movie is!
richwgriffin-227-176635
Puzzled by the negative reviews of this truly amazing movie about class issues - the way wealthy people live in a "virtual world" where real people are somehow not affected by their decisions to make more money based on the flick of a button on a computer. The film is about how poor people have a necessary need to come together and fight back. Her decision to take the child to Dunkirk in order to get him to face what he has done (buying a business in order to destroy it; shades of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital) allows the community to come together to try to protect her. It's also important to notice that the police are used for repressive purposes to help those in power and not to help those who are hurting.The performances are top-notch, especially Karin Viard as France. She is bold, impulsive, not always nice, bright, intuitive, curious - a fully rounded woman trying to cope with dire economic circumstances.Far from lazy, Cedric Klapisch does a fantastic job of moving back & forth between two very different worlds of haves and have-nots - in fact, I found myself completely engrossed in both worlds inhabited in this film.My interest didn't lag for a single moment. I highly recommend that you see for yourselves and look at it from the p.o.v. not of "reality", but of possibility. I absolutely loved this movie!!! (: Enjoy!
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.