Potiche (15)

Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve

Catherine Deneuve is on magnificent form – singing and dancing! – in François Ozon's comedy of female emancipation in the 1970s.

She plays Suzanne, the put-upon trophy wife ("potiche") of a chauvinist berk (Fabrice Luchini) who runs the family umbrella factory. Tired of his condescension she takes over the running of the business while he's away and proves a dab hand, recruiting her son as designer and winning over the workers. It's as if Douglas Sirk had remade a seventies sitcom – in fact it's adapted from a play – while Gérard Depardieu as an old flame of Suzanne's brings ballast to the flyaway confection.