This sugary French romcom of secretarial romance in the 1950s is all too obviously being sold on the Mad Men ticket, with smart suits, cute dresses and lots of smoking – but entirely without that famous TV show's acid cynicism and anxiety. The manager is asked if he might quit smoking in the office and in reply smirks that only legislation could stop him: Mad Men would never step out of the historical frame in this timid and apologetic way.
There are a lot of sane men, and dull men, and smug men in a movie that could as well be known as Strictly Remington or They Shoot Typists, Don't They? And Romain Duris, Déborah François and Bérénice Bejo, who have shown how compelling they can be in other films, are now required to give performances that are not exactly their best work. François goes into mignonne hyperdrive as Rose, a secretary who is pretty and hopeless and pretty hopeless – but gosh, she can type fast: on the French Azerty keyboard, naturally. So her smoothie boss Louis (Duris) enters her into the French national speedtyping championships. The shy Rose becomes a national sensation, sponsored by manufacturers of the new girly-pink Populaire typewriter, and the coach-athlete relationship evolves into something more. Louis is given a very unlikely Mad Men-like American buddy, who tortures those French vowels something rotten. He is married to the beautiful Marie (Bejo), for whom Louis may have feelings, and it is Marie who matchmakes Rose and Louis in a clunkingly uncomfortable way. You'll need to have a very sweet tooth for this, and it makes light of those difficult sexual politics that Mad Men attacked with such fierce satire.
