Based on “The Grande Odalisque” by Bastien Vivès, Florent Ruppert, and Jérôme Mulot, director/lead actress Mélanie Laurent’s new Netflix movie, Wingwomen (Voleuses, or Thieves in French), follows three women embarking on one last heist to get out of the business. Now unfortunately, since the film was produced, both Vivès and Ruppert have landed in hot water, causing Mulot to sever ties with the latter. We’re here to assess the film on its own merits, but for the record, any endorsement of it is not one for the creators in question.
And a good thing too, because Laurent’s film is breezy good fun, with plenty of humor, a wholesome emphasis on female friendship, and plenty of the style and pizazz you would want from a heist film. It’s not the greatest French movie ever made, but it’s an enjoyable two hours nonetheless. The film follows Carole (Laurent) and her partner-in-crime, sniper and animal lover Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos), as they make a deal to retire by stealing Martial Raysse’s pop art piece Made in Japan, La Grande Odalisque, while it’s on loan to a gallery in Corsica. Needing a getaway driver, they recruit race car engineer Sam (Manon Bresch), who’s in thorough need of training.
It’s a fairly laidback film: the trio arrive in Corsica well ahead of the painting’s arrival, and get up to all kinds of diversions between teaching Sam how to run and gun. It’s not especially funny for the first half, with the jokes and banter largely resulting in grins and smiles from yours truly, although Philippe Katerine’s handler Abner is a broadly humorous character. The comedy upgrades when Alex gets into a fight with a naked assailant (that’s right, and I won’t elaborate how), a wince-inducingly brutal battle that makes you laugh at the sheer audacity of it, sending us into the main heist, where anything that can go wrong does, and Carole winds up having the most awkward conversation of her life – I will not be forgetting either encounter anytime soon.
The main exception to the generally amiable tone is Isabelle Adjani, who is a genuinely creepy and frightening presence as Carole’s “Godmother”: it’s not explicit, but made very apparent that she was an ultimately abusive mentor, greatly reinforcing the theme of the found sisterhood between Carole, Alex, and Sam. She reminds you it’s still a violent criminal underworld that this fun-loving trio are a part of, and are trying to get out of: pulling off a heist is easy, trusting this wicked stepmother to keep her promises is harder, and the emotional intensity heightens whenever Adjani’s onscreen.
Laurent is truly the calm center of the film, visibly older but no less arresting than when Quentin Tarantino introduced her to the world in Inglourious Basterds nearly 15 years ago, while Manon Bresch is a truly sweet newcomer as Sam. However, the MVP would have to be Exarchopoulos, who’s consistently fun as Alex, simultaneously petulant and mature, a whiny mess of a human being who’s no less competent at what she does. She’s a little sister, who towers over the other two physically and vocally – if there’s any justice, she’ll be at the top of the audition list for Big Barda at DC Studios.
A heist film lives and dies by its set pieces, and Wingwomen has plenty. The opening, where Carole and Alex escape a disastrous mission, is rather rough, feeling reliant on second unit and CGI, with choppy editing and oddly grainy cinematography. This is followed by a tense shoot out with striking (no pun intended) glass walls, and Sam’s nailbiting baptism of fire, which is full of vivid, intense close-ups, and another exhilarating escape, which is cleaner in terms of cutting. Then we get the two aforementioned fun fight and heist, plus an unforgettable side mission involving dancing – clearly, Laurent has learned something from working with Tarantino and Michael Bay.
Laurent also shows off her skills behind the camera with some trippy moments, including a moment Alex thinks back to how bad of a driver she is. It’s a fun, comic booky flourish in a movie full of several, including the especially quirky way Carole and Alex infiltrate the painting gallery, as you slowly realize how they’re doing it. The color grading is generally gorgeous, with Corsica being a beautiful setting, and some of the wide shots prove to be a doozy. Archive’s score is pleasant, although generally only used to transition from scene to scene, adding to the relaxed pace.
A less generous critic might charge Wingwomen is a disjointed, tonally all-over-the-place attempt at doing a chick flick with action and violence, but on the whole, it’s an easygoing bit of fun with a trio of characters I’d love to see again, and there’s a meta poignancy to it, with Laurent directing herself in an action movie before she feels too old for it. With winter setting in, there are certainly far worse ways to imagine yourself turning back the clock to the summer for a Gallic adventure. There’s a second graphic novel with these characters, “Olympia,” but on the whole this was a charming and engaging potential final adventure should that never get filmed.
