A wife boxed into the role of a Supporting Player rises to run the family business: Potiche, François Ozon’s film, will be broadcast Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 9:00 PM on Arte. Released in France on November 10, 2010, this adaptation of Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy’s play casts Catherine Deneuve as Suzanne Pujol, within a provincial bourgeois setting of the 1970s.
In 1977, Robert Pujol rules an umbrella factory with an iron fist and also dominates at home. A strike, followed by the boss’s health problems, pushes Suzanne to step in. The wife whom her husband once labeled a “decorative vase” then discovers responsibilities she had been kept out of.
Fabrice Luchini stars as Robert, while Gérard Depardieu plays Maurice Babin, the Communist deputy mayor. Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche and Jérémie Renier are the other leads. The factory's leadership reshuffle brings together love affairs, social hierarchies and labor conflicts in a comedy adapted from theater.
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