CHIC! Fashion, fun and a little love in Jérôme Cornuau & Jean-Paul Bathany's French charmer

I was told that CHIC!, the new movie starring that diva-to-idolize, Fanny Ardant, was a French farce. It's not. There are no slamming doors, characters running from room to room, in flagrante delicto moments, nor any of the other signs that a farce in on view. This surprisingly low-key movie refuses to push almost anything, relying instead on subtlety, sweetness and humor based more on character than situation to charm the pants off us. Which it does. My pants, at least (my spouse's, too).

Fashion is the theme here: how and why it is created and the effect is has on the half-dozen or so main characters on view. These would include the notorious and talented haute-couture legend responsible for the line (Ms Ardant, above); the haughty young woman, Hélène, near the top of the food chain of the corporation who "owns" the designer and her line (the delightfully sour Marina Hands, below);

her boss, a would-be Napoleon whose constant shouting can't quite conceal his ferocious fear (the very funny Laurent Stocker, at center, below), and the down-to-earth gardener (a terrific Eric Elmosnino) hired to give Hélène's home a touch of green.

You might remember M. Elmosnino (below, center) from his César-winning title role in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. His performance here shows once again how very versatile he is, fitting easily into just about any kind of character and genre.

The film's director, Jérôme Cornuau (shown below), is a newcomer to my purview, though he has made nearly 20 films (most of them for French television). So whether it is more his doing or that of his screenwriter,

Jean-Paul Bathany, I cannot say for certain (maybe a lucky combination of both), but the product of this collaboration is such a gentle, loving rom-com-cum-satire that yours truly found himself, for maybe the first time in his film-going history, being able to appreciate a movie with fashion -- the most-often appalling and ludicrous of all the supposed "arts" -- at its center.

How Monsieurs Cornuau & Bathany achieve this is by keeping their humor grounded in character rather than "event," the latter of which usually leads to a sit-com  Even their "diva" is just a human being, brought to fine life by Ardant, who has a wonderful little speech toward film's end, in which her character tackles behavior and artists and makes a most interesting, sensible and telling point.

All the characters here -- even the nasty boss, silly as he is -- behave too intelligently for farce. Scene after scene offers a small surprise (note the pitch-perfect one that takes place in the office of Hélène's shrink), and when characters do stupid or bad things, they pay for them. Yet the film is full of funny events and happenings, all handled in a lovely, low-key style. How much more unusual -- and welcome -- is this approach than that of all-out satire, farce or over-the-top humor.

Ms Hands (who also won a César for her fine performance as and in Lady Chatterley) is quite special here, balancing her anger and hauteur against a genuineness and gentleness just begging to be allowed to appear. As they gradually do, the movie morphs into something we hadn't initially expected. Think of it as a rom-com with smarts -- lots of 'em.

Chic! -- from Distrib Films US and running 103 minutes -- opens this Friday, May 1, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. If you don't live in the L.A. area, never fear: the film will be available simultaneously on Vudu, iTunes and Google Play.  (Eventually, I would hope, we'll be able to see this one via Netflix streaming. But not quite yet.)

Comedy, crime, romance and "catricide" dot Gillian Greene's droll farce, MURDER OF A CAT

Talk about bizarre movies: After yesterday's winner, The Foxy Merkins, today we cover another oddball film for which there is not much precedent, so far as I can recall. MURDER OF A CAT, the new movie from first-time-full-length filmmaker Gillian Greene, is very nearly uncategorizable. Maybe think of it as a kind of throwback. But to what? The closest match might be the screwball crime capers of the 1940s, with a man in the role usually reserved for a woman: the clueless and not very bright "investigator" who sets the plot in motion. Really: This movie sort of mimics the sensibility of that family from You Can't Take It With You but sets its behavior down in the midst of our 21st Century.

Ms Greene (shown at left) is also known, evidently, as Mrs. Sam Raimi (Sam was one of the producers on the film) but what she has come up with would never be mistaken for a Raimi endeavor. Her movie begins with what looks like a nail-biting escape. By whom? From what? We don't know, but the escapee sure looks scared. Then we get the title card that reads Five Days Earlier and we're whisked back in time to a pleasant surburban street and a yard sale involving a bratty kid, our beleaguered hero and the cat that will soon be headed for kitty heaven. Also on tap: out hero's semi-nattering-but-really-pretty-decent mother; a local law-enforcement officer who's infinitely nicer and more patient than any you'll have seen on film in this century; a heroine who's up to something besides being heroic; and the owner of the town's superstore which has put a number of other local small businesses out of business. Including that belonging to our hero.

So the stage is set for... what? Just about anything you might guess. And the plot's twists and turns certainly encourage this kind of helter-skelter approach in which one odd thing leads to another even odder. The movie really turns on the role of Clinton Moisey and the performance of Fran Kranz (above) in that role. Mr. Kranz has impressed in some of the work of Joss Whedon and his crew, but here he gets the kind of bizarre role that actors either embrace or go running from as fast as they can. Kranz embraces it and then some.

From the near-fright wig he wears initially to his self-righteous attitude, constant bumbling and wrong-headedness, he makes Clinton a hero that only a mother (and maybe a girlfriend) could love. And he is just loony enough to finally win us over. In the role of the girlfriend and cat-sharer, Greta, Nikki Reed (above) makes a pleasantly abrasive other half of the investigative team,

while J. K. Simmons (above), always great fun to watch, plays the local Sheriff in such a pleasant and patient manner than he almost makes you forgot his Snidely role in the current Whiplash. Blythe Danner as the sweet, thoughtful mom; Greg Kinnear, offering up all kinds of charac-terizations as the owner of that megastore; and the wonderful Leonardo Nam as the store's most bizarre employee round out the main cast.

As a filmmaker, Ms Greene wisely concentrates on low-key humor rather than mystery or suspense (as both of the latter are either ridiculous or missing in action), and thereby succeeds in making her movie work pretty well. Overlong by maybe ten minutes, Murder of a Cat never pushes too hard and so ends up being a lot more charming than you might expect.

The movie -- from Gravitas Ventures and running 101 minutes -- opens today, Friday, December 5, in New York City at the Village East Cinema. Simultaneously, it will also be available via VOD platforms, Amazon, Apple and iTunes.