French women don’t give une figue – Times of India

It's already a month since the fourth and final season of the French show Call My Agent dropped on a popular streamer, and its all that everyones been recommending. In the five years since its existence, the show has been a huge hit in France but also gathered cult status in several countries, including the UK, the USA and India.The shows producers have said they are surprised at its monster success outside their country. Called Dix Pour Cent (Ten Per Cent, after the commission that movie star agents charge actors) in France, the show is set in a talent management agency that sees its hardworking maverick agents pull out a new real-life celebrity (playing themselves) out of a pickle in each episode. It has clever writing, the compulsatory salt in any half-decent show, but its especially appealing for upchucking the political correctness American office shows shove down our throat. Theres ample sleeping with bosses, nepotism, bringing pets and kids to work, normalising adultery and bluffing out of contracts. The French way, like their lacit, is hard to understand by the rest of the world.Despite the mischief, there are prized lessons to be learned from the show. Call my Agent is as much an education on an original Parisian womans style as it is on her agency over her mind and body.Much of this is seen in one of its lead characters Andrea Martel. The attractive and bossy leading lady is only incidentally homosexual. She could have also been a man doing the same role or a heterosexual woman, and therein lies her characters fortitude. Andrea is dressed in menswear-inspired suits that match her gamine frame perfectly and are simultaneously au courant. Her wardrobe is timeless, muted and built on shirts, turtle necks and the odd piece of jewellery. Her femininity comes in from her baby-blue eyes and her perennial red pout.

The shows costume designer Anne Schotte has said in an interview that she deliberately dodged the clichs of French fashion Breton stripes and berets drawing inspiration instead of real-life office-goers. The change is so obviously low-key, you actually wonder if this is really Paris.Schotte has especially followed one eternal rule of Parisian chic: mixing high street with designer wear, modern with retro and Dior and Zadig & Voltaire with Zara. Andrea, the strongest female Caucasian character written in too long, never lets her clothes speak louder than she does. Thus she doesnt become a pastiche of a lesbian or an independent woman.Call My Agent arguably benumbs the Indian watchers palate accustomed to the bedazzle of Bollywood and its Wives or the brand-dropping ladies of Sex & the City. But look around you, unless you work in a fashion magazine, no one is dripping in brand-name fashion. Mercifully, no one here wears trackpants or torn jeans either. Hallelujah.The women in the show are all rather diverse from Andrea to Noemie (the sexpot who sleeps with her boss) to Camille (a senior partners daughter) to Sofia (biracial receptionist and struggling actor) to Charlotte (polished Machiavelli who has had three kids with three different husbands) to Catherine (suspicious wife who ends up having an affair). But they are all funny, attractive, curious and ironic. Each one exudes an enviable nonchalance. Not one of them wears too much makeup, too many colours or too many accessories.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own)

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French women don't give une figue - Times of India