'AGATHE CLÉRY' (2008). REVIEW, by Naouel Abbadi

Agathe Cléry is a hard-working and modern marketing director from a cosmetics company, specialized in clear skin. Her colleagues find her snob, strict, and they know she is a racist.

But what would be the height of absurdity for a racist? To become as black as those whom she hates. It is what happens one beautiful day to Agathe.

We will witness how she's affected by the Addison's disease, an extremely rare condition which is going to darken her. The racist marketing director of a special cosmetics line for pale skin wakes up one morning - totally black.

Fired by her boss, dumped by her fiancé, turned away in all her job interviews, Agathe finds herself on the other side.
Faced with the reality of becoming a black person, dealing with the same vicious discrimination and taunts she used to dish out so frequently, she struggles to accept her new paradigm in life.

Agathe Cléry is one of those amazingly rare filmmaking achievements that works on nearly every conceivable level. It’s an eccentric musical, acid satire and euphoric comedy all mixed together into a capricious spicy delight.

© Produire à Paris

The film is directed by Étienne Chatiliez, a man who has been acclaimed numerous times in France for his satirical and acid comedies. With co-writer Laurent Chouchan, he manages the handling of the racism issue in a sour way: their character embraces popular French stereotypes of blacks as the only viable solution to her mess. Valerie Lemercier (Agathe Cléry) pulls off the oddball comic and dance sequences with rigor and finesse.

With Chatiliez the caricature does not avoid the reality that it denounces; it is, on the contrary, the fairest expression of it. With a cocktail of music, singing, dancing, humour, but also some truths, Agathe Cléry will make you laugh more than once...