When you’re the richest woman in the world, it’s only to be expected that someone will make a movie about your life. When you’ve capped a long and illustrious career with the kind of public scandal that keeps the tabloids in business, there’s little chance the inevitable bio pic will be admiring and respectful. In the wake of a 2023 Netflix documentary series called The Billionaire, The Butler and the Boyfriend, French director, Thierry Klifa, saw the potential for a black comedy based on the last years of Liliane Bettencourt (1922-2017), the woman at the helm of L’Oréal cosmetics.
The Richest Woman in the World is consistently entertaining, but more likely to make you gasp rather than laugh out loud. Isabelle Huppert, formidable as ever, plays the wealthy protagonist, Marianne Farrère, head of the Windler Group. Marianne is a cool customer, the supreme ruler of her family company. Her husband, Guy Farrère (André Marcon) is content to play a secondary role, while everybody else in the boardroom recognises that Marianne’s word is law.
The matriarch’s sovereignty is so complete she seems bored with the business. She has little time for her daughter, Fredérique (Marina Foïs), a self-styled writer and musician whose lifestyle depends on the corporation and her husband’s seat on the board. For Marianne, entertaining government ministers, attending cultural events and attending to public relations are all slightly tiresome chores, undertaken dutifully but without enthusiasm.
Everything changes during a shoot for a luxury magazine (called Selfish), when Marianne encounters the flamboyant photographer, Pierre-Alain Fantin (Laurent Lafitte). Unlike everyone else, so deferential in her presence, Pierre-Alain respects no-one and nothing. He’s loud, camp and abrasive, deaf to any opinion but his own. He tells Marianne her outfit is all wrong and supervises while she goes rifling through her wardrobe. Marianne is delighted by the boorish treatment, and even more pleased by the photo spread.