Mama Weed – La daronne (2020)

Directed by: Jean-Paul Salomé | 104 minutes | comedy, crime | Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Hippolyte Girardot, Farida Ouchani, Liliane Rovère, Iris Bry, Nadja Nguyen, Rebecca Marder, Rachid Guellaz, Mourad Boudaoud, Abbes Zahmani, Yann Sundberg

The police in Paris are at their wits’ end when a new big-name player shows up in the capital’s drug trade. The new mysterious “Madame” (‘La daronne’ means the mother – and terribly translated in English as ‘Mama Weed’) with a headscarf quickly establishes her authority – and the police, led by team leader Philippe (Hippolyte Girardot) has no idea that they might have to look very close.

The new criminal genius is their own interpreter-translator Arabic – and Philippe’s girlfriend Patience Portefeux. She is played by the queen of French cinema Isabelle Huppert in a rather light-hearted role. Patience initially has a manageable life: she goes along with police raids on the “Arabs” to facilitate communication between the police and detainees and spends a lot of time with her old mother (Liliane Rovère) who is in an (too) expensive nursing home. included. Her husband Martin died young in Oman. As the film progresses, you learn more about him and Patience’s family, and her transition becomes clearer and more believable. She is the only original French woman to live in a neighborhood with only Chinese. While listening to a wiretapped telephone conversation between criminals, she overhears one of the drug dealers talking to his mother – and she recognizes Kadidja (Farida Ouchani), her mother’s nurse. Solitaire decides to keep that information to herself and that puts her on the path of crime.

‘Mama Weed’ (‘La daronne’) is based on the novel of the same name by Hannelore Cayre, a criminal lawyer in Paris, who later became a writer and film maker. The book “La Daronne” won a European thriller prize and was also adapted for the film by her as a co-screenwriter.

Director Jean-Paul Salomé serves a smooth and typically French crime comedy with an ironic wit and a slightly socially critical tone. Here and there the film navigates uncomfortably, but deftly along all kinds of stereotypes about the Chinese community and what could easily be referred to as the “Arab” gangs. Huppert effortlessly transitions from exhausted police aid to sophisticated drug criminal and the twinkle in her eye is contagious. It’s also completely her movie, which she carries from start to finish and where she’s in just about every scene. The obstacles and dangers that Solitaire encounters are solved quite easily, never creating any real tension and the film moves towards a solid ending quite relaxed.

Hans Geurts