THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD
- Colin Fraser
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
TWO STARS A wealthy matriarch falls in with a lively photographer. That he's also a free-loading grifter doesn't escape the attention of her family.
DRAMA FRANCE French #RICHESTWOMAN Starring Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte
Thierry Klifa’s THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD has the ‘you couldn’t make this stuff up’ pedigree that usually does half the work for you. Loosely drawn from the Bettencourt affair (the extraordinary saga surrounding the L’Oréal heiress) it follows Marianne Farrère (Isabelle Huppert), a cosmetics empire matriarch whose carefully embalmed existence is jolted by a meeting with Pierre-Alain Fantin, a flamboyant photographer and writer. Their relationship - part friendship, part emotional dependency, part financial free-for-all - rapidly unsettles her family who begin to suspect - quite rightly - that this supposed muse is just a grifter with his hand firmly in the till.
On paper, this has all the ingredients of a deliciously juicy (yet insightful) pedigree soap. There’s vast wealth, media manipulation, family intrigue and a real-life scandal that already feels like grand opera. The film even leans into this by framing Pierre-Alain as a kind of agent of chaos, a disruptive force who jolts Marianne out of her gilded stupor and into something resembling vitality. But here’s the snag, he's is not remotely seductive. From the outset, Fantin is less dangerous interloper than a boorish, ill-mannered pest. The film insists on his magnetism while showing us none of it, leaving a credibility gap no amount of Farrère filler is going to plug.
The central problem lands early and never recovers: from his first appearance, Fantin is profoundly irritating. Not dangerously charming, not slyly compelling, just grating. He aggravates everyone he encounters, so why, for one, does his long-suffering boyfriend stay? Love? Money? Habit? The film shrugs. Likewise, Marianne’s unwavering loyalty becomes less tragic than perplexing. We’re told this is a story of influence and emotional entanglement, yet it’s not at all obvious why she keeps his company.
This confusion is baffling because the real events are straightforward enough and, frankly, bonkers. This was a case involving allegations of abuse, of vulnerability, enormous financial gifts, and a family implosion that played out in public. You’d think dramatising it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead, Klifa opts for a curious tonal middle ground - part comedy, part bourgeois tragedy - that never pulls focus either way.
As the plot develops, the stakes should escalate. Instead, everything feels oddly static. Only Marianne’s step-daughter gets something to do, everyone else remains locked in obscure, repeating behaviours. You keep waiting for something to click, for the seduction to make sense, for the drama to ignite. It never does.
Even Huppert, usually capable of conjuring magic from the sparsest material can’t bridge the gap. She is as watchable as ever but seems stranded, circling a character whose motivation remains stubbornly opaque. In the end, THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD is an exercise in frustration (ours). A tale that ought to be wildly entertaining, intoxicating, operatic, simply trudges - albeit loudly - around in circles to prompt the same question over and over. Why?
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