The Richest Woman in the World

Thierry Klifa approaches his new film The Richest Woman in the World like a jeweler who polishes a scandal until it reflects something more seductive than gossip: how money, memory, and desire can bind and corrupt in the same gesture. Freely reflecting the Bettencourt affair through the fictional empire of Marianne Farrère, the film announces its prerogative from the outset—very loosely based on real events—and then delves into a roman à clef where the creation of family myths, astronomical gifts, and a brazen intruder blow apart the carefully crafted label of old money. This mixture of invention and recognizable flaws is not timidity; it is the film's thesis on perception, power, and the stories that wealth tells in order to survive.

At the heart of this polished machine is Isabelle Huppert, who embodies less a victim than a woman who has confused control with freedom. Her character, Marianne, is carefully studied in every detail, until the arrival of Pierre-Alain Fantin, played by Laurent Lafitte, with his exuberant verve, caustic wit, and resourceful instinct that allows him to open any door through sheer perseverance. Their bond is platonic but intense: a conspiracy of appetite in which he brings chaos and she brings access. Thierry Klifa's choice to frame the saga through comedy, without exonerating anyone, gives their scenes a nervous effervescence; laughter is a solvent that reveals class contempt, emotional neglect, and the way attention itself can be perceived as a narcotic. The filmmaker has said he chose this register to “observe without judging,” filtering a human tangle rather than lamenting the ultra-rich; the result is a study of how money amplifies every crack until it resembles destiny.

Formally, the film favors discretion over ostentation. Hichame Alaouïé's camera glides through large rooms that refuse to show off, in accordance with Thierry Klifa's rule: no bling, only the silent tyranny of good taste. Production designer Eve Martin composes an environment where power hides in neutral palettes and antique surfaces; costume designers Jürgen Doering and Laure Villemer extend this logic to the body, dressing Marianne in an astonishing rotation—seventy distinct looks, never twice the same—so that clothing becomes at once armor, status, and secret language. Even the narrative structure shows restraint and care: black intertitles punctuate the action, a nod to the media coverage of the affair and a device that allows competing points of view to be woven together in a polyphonic manner without breaking the film's silence.

The supporting cast is equally prestigious. Marina Foïs gives Frédérique the fragile balance of a girl trained to keep the family portrait in frame, then lets the veneer crack scene after scene; her story transforms the inheritance into a trap – financial, ideological, and emotional – especially as the clan's collaborationist past resurfaces in the present. Raphaël Personnaz, in the role of butler Jérôme, begins as a silent metronome of the house's rituals and gradually becomes the troubled conscience of the film, his loyalty turning against him in a social order that only likes servants as long as they remain invisible. André Marcon sketches a husband whose authority is both institutional and curiously hollow, while Mathieu Demy and Joseph Olivennes nuance the family's difficult negotiations with image and desire. Thierry Klifa's portrayal of these characters—monstrous and deeply childish—seems accurate; no one here seeks to be loved, and the film is all the better for it.

What distinguishes Thierry Klifa's approach from a simple edifying tale about the abuse of weakness is the way he continues to give Marianne the initiative without denying the reality of the manipulation. The film repeatedly shows moments when Marianne recognizes the abuse—and still invites him back. This ambivalence is at the heart of the drama: the weak point of the richest woman is not naivety, but loneliness, the pain of a life organized until death. One of the film's most beautiful moments—a detour to a nightclub preceded by an interlude sung by Anne Brochet, to an original composition by Alex Beaupain—makes this pain audible; the sequence opens a back door to the character, suggesting not only the thrill of transgression, but also the fragile dream of being someone else, somewhere else, for the duration of a song.

Thierry Klifa and his collaborators are meticulous about texture. The silence of the setting highlights the micro-humiliations: a hand on the shoulder, an avoided gaze, a vulgar remark that feels like a slap in the face. The dialogues (co-written with Cédric Anger and Jacques Fieschi) favor poisoned courtesy, until Pierre-Alain shatters conventions with the bravado of a performance artist, erasing distance through touch, noise, and indecency. This theatricality can border on caricature, but it is also a strategy. Forcing literal and social doors that should remain closed, the film cleverly follows how this tactic works until it fails. In other words, comedy is a means of domination and dependence.

While the work ultimately gives the impression of being close to success in its brilliant momentum, it resists the usual climax of the genre, namely just punishment. Thierry Klifa's political thread—those dark legacies of war, that ordinary anti-Semitism rooted in the dynasty—runs through the romance of control like an electric wire, but he refuses to moralize, preferring the cold register of consequences. In the end, legal language has done its work, the press has had a field day, and the household has reorganized itself; all that remains is a woman on a beach, accompanied, weakened, strangely serene, as if the storm had clarified a truth she can finally accept. Isabelle Huppert embodies this final silence without asking for pity, thus honoring the director's stated goal: no pathos, no absolution, just the human residue—complicity, consolation, a little peace.

The Richest Woman in the World is less a critique than an X-ray. It is compact where it could have been expansive, elegant where it could have been mocking, and anchored by a protagonist who understands that mystery, not revelation, is the currency of power. Thierry Klifa relies on close-ups to do the moral work, Hichame Alaouïé illuminates wealth as a secret rather than a spectacle, Eve Martin and costume designers Jürgen Doering and Laure Villemer let the environment and wardrobe speak in code, and Alex Beaupain's graceful musical score gives the film its only explicit sigh. The pleasures here are precise: a raised eyebrow, a surgical retort, the slow realization that in this house, every gift is a debt, and that every debt, sooner or later, must be repaid.

The Richest Woman in the World
Directed by Thierry Klifa
Written by Cédric Anger, Jacques Fieschi, Thierry Klifa
Produced by Mathias Rubin
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Marina Foïs, Raphaël Personnaz, André Marcon, Mathieu Demy, Joseph Olivennes, Micha Lescot, Paul Beaurepaire, Yannick Renier, Anne Brochet, Douglas Grauwels
Cinematography: Hichame Alaouié
Edited by Chantal Hymans
Music by Alex Beaupain
Production companies: Recifilms, Versus Production, 7 SOFICA
Distributed by Haut et Court (France)
Release dates: May 18, 2025 (Cannes Festival), October 29, 2025 (France)
Running time: 123 minutes

Seen on October 21, 2025 at UGC Ciné-cité Les Halles, theater 10

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