An embarrassment of bitches, vile queens and anti Semites, infest THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD, an investment not for the time poor.
Isabelle Huppert plays Marianne Farrère, a woman of many layers, by turns seductive, fragile, hard, and powerful, the richest woman in the world. Her marriage and her relationship with her only child, her daughter, Frédérique, is perilously passionless and emotionally bankrupt.
Into her life comes a photographer, Pierre-Alain Fantin, whose ambition, audacity, and flamboyance is attractive as shit to a blowfly. He may be an opportunist but she is smitten by the straight talking sodomite. The idle rich idolising the fabulous and fatuous. Money can buy you a penis.
Laurent Lafitte brings an imposing extravagance to the role, a rakish self serving rat who knows he’s swallowed the cat, a carving knife conniver of fat cat kitty glitter going for gold.
Marina Foïs takes on the role of her daughter and heir, a mistrustful heiress fighting to be loved, having become more of an outlier by marrying a Jew.
Raphaël Personnaz plays the Farrère butler, a seemingly secondary figure who gradually becomes central, a spy of sorts, crushed by the system he serves, caught between loyalty, class dynamics, and a machinery that’s far beyond his control. Omnipresent observer of family secrets and astronomical donations.
Few modern scandals have captivated France, and indeed the world, as the astonishing events surrounding Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress to the L’Oriel fortune. The sensational scuttlebutt of the wantonness of the wealthy, unfathomable to most has inspired writer/director Thierry Klifa to freely adapt the high society hi jinks into a movie that tries to mitigate the heiress and fortune-hunter’s folly, in all its excess and extraordinary ramifications.
Eat the rich and get indigestion, THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD is an enema of the people.
Scrumptious review Mr. Cotter