User Reviews

To begin, the title is misleading. Not having an idea as to what the film was about, we took a chance because of the ingredients that went into its making. Let's face it, anything with the divine Isabelle Huppert in it, is worth a look.

Babou, an unemployed mother living in Lille, has seen better days. Now alone and unemployed, she is trying to get work wherever she can get it. Unfortunately, there is limited positions where she qualifies. Babou has a grownup daughter, Esmeralda, is engaged to a local young man, who is the opposite of what her mother is. Esmeralda resents her mother for being absent most of the time, when she needed her most. The contrast between Babou, a free spirited woman and her more responsible daughter is impressive.

After Babou tries unsuccessfully to get a job at a pastry shop, she decides to go to a Belgian seaside city where she enters an apprenticeship in time share selling in a new development. Lydie, the woman in charge of the hopeful applicants is not exactly fond of Babou who stands in sharp contrast with herself. Babou is made to share one of the apartments in the complex with a bitter older woman, who clearly despises everything about her new flatmate.

Babou, who makes friends easily, becomes friendly with a dock worker, Bart, with whom she begins a sexual affair. Because of her attitude toward life, Bart decides not to see her anymore, something that Babou did not really count on. Asking for an advance on her future earnings, Babou wants Esmeralda to come for a visit. Babou made friends with a homeless couple she sees from her window. She invites them to come stay in one of the unoccupied units of the complex.

With her daughter's arrival, Babou decides to take her to dinner and invite the homeless couple and their dog, to a good restaurant. Esmeralda is appalled by the couple and her mother's attitude toward them and flees to go back home. After finally making a go of her job, Babou gets Lydie's recognition. When the two women go for a night where they bond along the promenade in front of the building, Lydie notices a light on an apartment that should have been vacant. Babou owns up it is her fault. Lydie tells her not to worry, but the next day, Babou is let go.

With the severance money, Babou decides to gamble it on the roulette at the local casino. To her amazement, she wins a considerable amount. Her dreams of going to Rio de Janeiro becomes a reality, but before that she wants to surprise her daughter and her future in-laws at Esmeralda's wedding reception, something that no one expected. Babou finally gets an appreciative Esmeralda to recognize how much her mother really loves her.

A surprising comedy written and directed by Marc Fitoussi. It was clearly a vehicle for the star. Most of it is a bit over the top, but Mr. Fitoussi was paying tribute to one of France's best stars of all times, the talented Isabelle Huppert, who is is perfect as the happy go lucky and uncomplicated woman. The film also features Ms. Huppert's own daughter Lolita Chammah, seen as Esmeralda, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kate Winslet. The resemblance of mother and daughter is also amazing. Others in supporting roles include Aure Atika, Jurgen Delnaet, Chantal Banlier, and others.

"Copacabana" is fun and light. It will delight Ms. Huppert's admirers.

Every few years Isabelle Huppert emerges from the sewer in which the majority of her films are set, metaphorically speaking, grabs a lungful of fresh, uncontaminated air and lets it out in a joyful explosion. This movie is one of those occasions and we had, I suppose, better make the most of it. I bow to no one in my admiration of Ms. Huppert, indeed I have admired her for more years than I care to remember or, to put it another way, since she was making entertaining, high quality films like Les Soeurs fachees rather than wallowing in the wild side. This film was clearly conceived as a vehicle for Huppert and she grabs it with both hands and even when it cries 'uncle' she barely lets go. In other hands the rather pedestrian story of the free spirit trying to force her square peg of wackiness into the round hole of convention - in this case to prove to her diametrically opposed daughter that she can do 'normal' - would fall flat but with Huppert it soars and takes us with it.

I'd seen a preview of Copocabana and was aware that Huppert and her on screen daughter were mother and daughter in real life... although this is very hard to pick.

Babou (Huppert) is a free spirit, probably once a hippie, arty, restless, a real free spirit. The complete opposite of your middle class reviewer and indeed her on screen daughter and most of the other characters in the film

I wouldn't call Copocabana so much a comedy as a very interesting study of those us married to jobs, relationships and being settled. Versus people like Babou who blow like the wind from place to place.

When her daughter announces she's going to get married and to save her mother the cost of paying for part of the wedding (and to save the daughter the embarrassment of her mother being there), her daughter tells her in laws her mother is in Brazil and won't be back to attend the wedding.

Hearing this Babou is hurt. One of her men friends (plutonic as it turns out) tells her about a job selling timeshares in Ostende, Belgium. So to prove to her daughter she can hold down a job & be responsible, Babou applies for and gets this job.

Arriving at Ostende we find a seafront high rise building in winter, in the off season with Babou and 3 or 4 others recruited to solicit potential buyers on the streets. Being winter and being winter in Belgium it's all a bit bleak and depressing. Aren't most movies set in Belgium slightly bleak? Betty Blue, Rosetta come to mind.

Slowly though we see Babou make one or two friends. A party of people dining out invite Babou to join her at their table and here she meets Bart played by Jurgen Delnaet who has similar red hair to Huppert but must be 10 or 15 years younger. I really liked Bart whose quite keen on Babou. But once again we see the contrast how she lives from day to day, whereas he works on the wharves unloading boats and has more sense of work and routine.

This is a film worth seeing and persevering with. Babou is a kind soul, we see her become a success and then... I won't spoil the ending.

Is it that work, long hours, relationships, living in the one house for many years makes us dull? What are the pluses and minuses compared to being a free spirit like Babou? You'll have to make your own mind up.

One things for sure I left the cinema thinking maybe there is more to life than work and maybe many of us need to be more spontaneous. Or at least have a bucket list of things to do, maybe draw these out of a hat. I've only personally known a few free spirits, restless souls like Babou. One girl who father was in the army and probably moved 25 times in 20 years. Another family of 5 where the father was a captain in the army and moved all the time. And another long lost friend, poet Adrian Rawlins who was an Australian equivalent of Babou, god rest his soul.

A thought provoking and in the end inspirational movie.