It is not as if there has been enough films and series over the richest 1 percent in recent years. While films such as “Parasite”, “The Menu” or “Triangle of Sadness” expose the super-rich in their mindlessness, prestige series such as “The White Lotus” or “Succession” have played an interesting game with us, which shows us how easy (and gladly!) We identify with the problems of the economic elite-regardless of our own reservations and Account stands. However, Thierry Klifa takes a distance from this seduction in his sixth cinema feature film. Loosen based on the life of Liliane Bettencourt, who was considered the main part of L'Oréal at the time of her death in 2018 as the richest woman in the world, Klifa shows us an Isabelle Huppert who, as a disoriented billionaire, falls on a clever charlatan.
The true case was already dealt with in detail in 2023 in the three-part Netflix True Crime-Minierei “The Bettencourt affair: scandal about the richest woman in the world”. Klifa knows what this genre is mostly going out in the first half of “The Richest Woman in the World“Working out well: Humor! This creates some fun moments, especially if the billionaire Marianne is allowed to play her quick -wittedness. Her humor is not always politically correct, sometimes racist, but you could not have found a better actress as Huppert (” Elle “), so that we would still – without it to be special – to smell a laugh. Like many such films, however, the introduction to the intoxicating luxury life of the corporate residents is much easier than the later crisis, on which not only Marianne, but also the script has to nibble.
With Isabelle Hupper, director Thierry Klifa has found the perfect line -up for his film co -produced by Netflix!
However, it takes a villain until that descent occurs. And that the Pierre-Alain Fantin played by Laurent Lafitte is one of them, only at the beginning there are certain residual doubts, although its intrigant grin shows us the way early. If he can still take a small part of the audience for himself, then only because his above all sublime arrogance sets out the rigid rules that are otherwise in Marianne's Parisian villa.
Over the entire term, surveys of the protagonists are cut in front of a black background. Who the characters are in conversation with is hidden to us – although the surveys neither arouse our interest in the events nor in their education anyway. You may not be able to question these intermediate sequences during the film, probably also because it is such a common genre style. Klifa, who, in addition to Jacques Fieschi and Cédric Anger, is also responsible for the script, has to put up with the question to what extent the interrogation and interview scenes in its history are useful. In a film that is otherwise almost without form of form, these scenes simply look like foreign bodies.
An expensive second spring
At the narrative level, the pattern that takes place as a result is too familiar. Marianne finds an equal to her in the dandy -like fantin and his narcissism who does not bend her counterpart, but impressed her with his skill for parlation, his stability and the promise of artistic taste. The second spring that Fantin seems to be preparing her can cost a lot, be it in the form of real estate, works of art or other grants. When the staff, friends and family become aware of intensity, with which Marianne Fantin worshiped and supports it, it seems too late, because the parasite has long since grown into the foundation stone.
This premise has its charm, especially when the bourgeois binds in Marianne's environment are exposed by Fantin as such. In this way, he not only openly displays his homosexuality, but also lives openly in the presence of Marianne's extended family. The fact that it is now the homosexual artist who has to serve as a deviant figure that not only breaks with the social codes, but also quickly also recognizes itself as a insidious conspirator may refrishes. However, it is far more detrimental to the story that director Klifa, the Fantin at the beginning, if his intentions are not yet clear, does not radiate, do not endure.
When the action becomes a sure -fire success
As soon as we as an audience are sure how the fronts are stuck here, “The Richest Woman in the World” quickly feels like painting by numbers; A pure commissioned work, the stations of which, in bar of every tension, now flips to our eyes. Provided to increasingly intrusive music, we can now observe how a family dispute will soon be broken out of Marianne's dependence on her new, purely platonic playing.
In the decision to expand the figure tableau through the perspectives of the domestic worker Jerome (Raphaël Personnaz) or the family of her daughter (Marina Foïs), Klifa may promise. However, apart from unique references that Marianne's daughter has only gained a certain status as a pianist because Marianne Höchstlste first produced all the records and then had it bought, this intertwrition of interests, existence and capital is not particularly interesting.
Her daughter remains right -wing and integrated until the end, rejects the “first million”, which Marianna wants to give her grandson to the bar with Mitzwa, and finally strikes the legal path to get rid of the Schmarotzer Fantin. But the story doesn't really want to take speed anymore. Probably also because the powder is just shot at the moment because we have certainty about what exactly it is all about with Fantin.
Conclusion: “The Richest Woman in the World” is what could be described as Netflix film: namely a film that comes in cinema format at first, but basically seems to be designed for the cell phone screen. The focus here is on the plot, which you don't necessarily have to bother if the story itself was only exciting enough. But since this is not sufficiently the case either, it is better to use the mini series on the same topic – after all, it is also available on Netflix.
We saw “The Richest Woman in the World” at the Film Festival in Cannes 2025, where he was shown out of competition.