my piece of the pie (ma part du gâteau) 2011 (karin viard) region free dvd5 french bcbc

My Piece of the Pie (French: Ma part du gâteau) is a 2011 French comedy-drama film directed by Cédric Klapisch. Starring Karin Viard and Gilles Lellouche.

Contains movie and Optional English, Spanish Subtitles. No menus or extras. Regular DVD quality. Thank you.

Spoken Language: French (some English)













Synopsis

In this topical morality tale, a single mother laid off from her factory job takes a position as a housemaid and nanny for a cocky commodities trader, only to discover that his financial maneuvering caused the closure of the plant where she worked.



Cast

Karin Viard, Gilles Lellouche, Audrey Lamy, Jean-Pierre Martins, Raphaele Godin, Fred Ulysse, Kevin Bishop, Marine Vacth, Flavie Bataillie, Tim Piggott-Smith



MY PIECE OF THE PIE

NYT Critics’ Pick

By Stephen Holden DEC. 8, 2011

In “My Piece of the Pie,” Gilles Lellouche, a handsome, rough-around-the-edges French star who could be the next generation’s Gérard Depardieu, nails the essence of a predatory capitalist shark. Having spent 10 years in London, his swaggering character, Stéphane (in England he’s called Steve), is dispatched to Paris to start a hedge fund. Before he leaves, his Mephistophelean mentor counsels, “Business is not a sport for gentlemen; it’s not for good people.” To which Stéphane assures him, “I’m bad!” And he is.



Watching him operate, you think of the traders in “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” heard boasting of wreaking havoc with the California power grid for the fun of it. When you’re as young as Stéphane, who is 35, rich and on top of the world, how could it not go to your head? In one scene he gives an online tutorial on how to make a quick 60,000 euros (about $80,000) by betting on currency fluctuations.



With women he is a charming, selfish rogue who pilots a supermodel to Venice in his private plane, then sulks when she won’t sleep with him because she has to “feel something.” His closest thing to a true love — Mélody (Raphaële Godin), who dumped him after he cheated — is his tough, sexy female equivalent at another brokerage house. He wants her back and whines that it wasn’t cheating because it was only with a call girl, “and that doesn’t count.” When he makes a pass at a woman, he lunges like a famished crocodile.



Because “My Piece of the Pie,” which was written and directed by Cédric Klapisch, predates the present-day euro crisis, it feels a little behind the curve. Once settled in Paris in a sleek penthouse apartment with a gym, an Eiffel Tower view and a stack of six computer screens beside his desk, Stéphane acquires an attractive housekeeper, portentously named France (Karin Viard). Along with 1,200 others, France lost her job of 20 years when her company in the port city Dunkirk was “iced,” to use one of Stéphane’s favorite words, and the labor outsourced to China. As she later learns to her chagrin, Stéphane masterminded the deal.



Most of “My Piece of the Pie” is told from France’s point of view. A divorced 42-year-old mother of three adolescent girls, she is a volatile piece of work whose reaction to being fired is a feeble suicide attempt. She is constantly arguing with her spoiled oldest daughter, Lucie (Flavie Bataillie), who shares her highly developed sense of injustice.



When Stéphane’s ex-wife, without notice, drops off their 3-year-old son, Alban (Lunis Sakji), at the apartment before taking a month’s vacation, he persuades France to be his full-time baby sitter and raises her salary. She also doubles as Stéphane’s arm candy at business functions, where she is instructed to put on a foreign accent when she has to speak. In these scenes “My Piece of the Pie” veers unsteadily from mild social satire to farce.



To its credit, the movie doesn’t collapse into sentimental mush when Stéphane begins to bond with his frisky little boy. If he displays a glimmer of heart, he doesn’t experience the kind of bogus redemption that a Hollywood movie would demand. Just when you expect the story to settle into a formula, it takes a sharp left turn that makes you question France’s judgment.



The movie’s tone, like its locations, is continually shifting. At times it suggests a slightly unhinged Gallic answer to “Up in the Air.” As the story races along, it begins to lurch. Stéphane’s dialogue consistently crackles, but the same can’t be said of France’s. She becomes a political scold in her most serious moments. At the same time, she is too emotionally unstable to be a trustworthy moral grounding wire.



Like Mr. Klapisch’s earlier films “L’Auberge Espagnole” and “Russian Dolls,” “My Piece of the Pie” paints an alluring picture of a pan-European cosmopolitan culture whose characters hopscotch from one country to another with hardly a second thought in a lighthearted floating party. Now, of course, there are alarming signs that the party is about to end.