The modest French comedy “The Women on the 6th Floor’’ would have us believe that a wealthy stockbroker would suddenly turn altruistic and that a young Spanish maid would fall in love with the overweight capitalist, who’s 30 years older than she is. Sorry, but I’m not buying it — even if the whole thing’s set in the free-loving ’60s.
Fabrice Luchini plays the broker, Jean-Louis, who has a stiff socialite wife, Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain), and two bratty sons in boarding school. His well-ordered life changes when he hires a new maid (the old one got her walking papers after 25 years with the family). Not only can the new housekeeper, Maria (Natalia Verbeke), perfectly hard-boil an egg for Jean-Louis’ breakfast, something her predecessor couldn’t, but she also has an attractive butt, which her boss gets to ogle while she takes a shower.
Maria introduces Jean-Louis to six sassy maids from Spain who share an apartment on the sixth floor of his Parisian building. Suddenly he turns benefactor, hiring a plumber to fix their toilet and allowing one of the women to use his phone to call her family back in Spain. He even joins them at a picnic and tries to learn Spanish.
When a jealous Suzanne throws him out, he moves onto the sixth floor with the maids, who are refugees from Franco’s dictatorship. “For the first time, I feel in my place,’’ Jean-Louis gushes. “Here I have discovered a family.’’
“The Women on the 6th Floor,’’ directed and co-written by Philippe Le Guay, has a few things going for it — a winning performance by Luchini and a small role by Pedro Almodóvar favorite Carmen Maura. But these talented folks can’t compensate for a plot that strains credulity and lacks badly needed social bite. Wait for the DVD.