Patricia Plattner's Bazar (2009)

This may not be Patricia Plattner's most successful film, although it's highly entertaining, and an interesting study of ageist and classist behaviour. Plattner was a friend of Bernadette Lafont, who was quite a Nouvelle Vague figure in her time, starring in Truffaut's short Les Mistons (1957) and Eustache's epic masterpiece La Madam et la putain (1973). She died four years after the making of this film. And this was in fact Plattner's final film: she died in 2016 aged sixty-three.

Lafont plays Gabrielle, an antiquarian who is evicted from her shop and falls into the arms of the handsome working-class Fred (Pio Marmaï), who at twenty-five is forty years younger than Gabrielle. Of course it can't last, but the righteous indignation of her peers is evidently not shared by the viewer: it's a treat to see Gabrielle living her brief dream. One of the most amusing scenes for me is when Fred interrupts a conversation between Gabrielle and her daughter Elvire (Lou Doillon): he's naked apart from an open shirt, his penis dangling unselfconsciously.