French women don’t give une figue

It's already a month since the fourth and final season of the French show ‘Call My Agent’ dropped on a popular streamer, and it’s all that everyone’s been recommending. In the five years since its existence, the show has been a huge hit in France but also gathered cult status in several countries, including the UK, the USA and India.The show’s producers have said they are surprised at its monster success outside their country. Called ‘Dix Pour Cent’ (Ten Per Cent, after the commission that movie star agents charge actors) in France, the show is set in a talent management agency that sees its hardworking maverick agents pull out a new real-life celebrity (playing themselves) out of a pickle in each episode. It has clever writing, the compulsatory salt in any half-decent show, but it’s especially appealing for upchucking the political correctness American office shows shove down our throat. There’s ample sleeping with bosses, nepotism, bringing pets and kids to work, normalising adultery and bluffing out of contracts. The French way, like their laïcité, is hard to understand by the rest of the world.Despite the mischief, there are prized lessons to be learned from the show. ‘Call my Agent’ is as much an education on an original Parisian woman’s style as it is on her agency over her mind and body.Much of this is seen in one of its lead characters Andrea Martel. The attractive and bossy leading lady is only incidentally homosexual. She could have also been a man doing the same role or a heterosexual woman, and therein lies her character’s fortitude. Andrea is dressed in menswear-inspired suits that match her gamine frame perfectly and are simultaneously au courant. Her wardrobe is timeless, muted and built on shirts, turtle necks and the odd piece of jewellery. Her femininity comes in from her baby-blue eyes and her perennial red pout. medium nocaption81113000The show’s costume designer Anne Schotte has said in an interview that she deliberately dodged the clichés of French fashion — Breton stripes and berets — drawing inspiration instead of real-life office-goers. The change is so obviously low-key, you actually wonder if this is really Paris.Schotte has especially followed one eternal rule of Parisian chic: mixing high street with designer wear, modern with retro and Dior and Zadig & Voltaire with Zara. Andrea, the strongest female Caucasian character written in too long, never lets her clothes speak louder than she does. Thus she doesn’t become a pastiche of a lesbian or an independent woman.‘Call My Agent’ arguably benumbs the Indian watcher’s palate accustomed to the bedazzle of Bollywood and its Wives or the brand-dropping ladies of ‘Sex & the City’. But look around you, unless you work in a fashion magazine, no one is dripping in brand-name fashion. Mercifully, no one here wears trackpants or torn jeans either. Hallelujah.The women in the show are all rather diverse — from Andrea to Noemie (the sexpot who sleeps with her boss) to Camille (a senior partner’s daughter) to Sofia (biracial receptionist and struggling actor) to Charlotte (polished Machiavelli who has had three kids with three different husbands) to Catherine (suspicious wife who ends up having an affair). But they are all funny, attractive, curious and ironic. Each one exudes an enviable nonchalance. Not one of them wears too much makeup, too many colours or too many accessories. medium nocaption81113012The essence of French style is in fact its insouciance, its effortlessness. The hair is never blow-dried, it always looks like the lady has just rolled out of bed. There are always trench coats because, well, it’s as indispensable as a woman’s armour. There are scarves aplenty, to add to the feminine mystique. The rest are basic jeans and gorgeous cashmere, because French women may appear to be understated but are crazy about clothes that last as long as they live — thereby giving us the most important tutorial in sustainability.Andrea gives us a great lesson in parenting. No, I don’t recommend anyone giving birth on the office floor with a junior doubling up as midwife. But I do like the idea of a child not being the centre of a woman’s life, or arousing a great maternal awakening in her. It is refreshing to see a woman whose child and childbirth changes little about her ambitions, and how she doesn’t feel the need to apologise for it.Something that’s noticeable to the point of alarming is that no one seems to have had any cosmetic surgery. There are wrinkles, laugh lines, and crow’s feet on every female character, including the pin-up Noemie. The women aren’t afraid of ageing. For the French, fake boobs are like fake bags — obvious, ugly and fraudulent. The only woman who looks like she’s had her face ironed is Sigourney Weaver, the 70-something-year-old American movie star in Paris hoping to make a film with a hero half her age. She is a wry comment on Hollywood’s obsession with ageism.The women of ‘Call My Agent’ have embraced their flaws, Andrea with her hooked nose, Sofia with her Afro, Beatrice Dalle with her crooked teeth and Julie Gayet with her unkempt eyebrows. These are signs of being beautiful without being perfect.Weaver is also the only time we see monogrammed luxury on screen here. She arrives with a trolley teeming over with Louis Vuitton luggage. None of the French actors are shown with any logos. Because real style can never be spelt out.Namrata Zakaria believes there’s more to fashion than meets the eyenamrata.zakaria@gmail.com, Tweets: @namratazakaria(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own)Untitled Carousel 80885829