The Great Typewriter Affair-With The Film Populaire In Mind -A Review 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Populaire, starring Deborah Francois, Romain Duris, 2012

 

Who knew that back in the 1950s, back in the time of my coming of age, that using a typewriter fast, very fast was a blood sport. You just never know. By the way for those who have forgotten, or were too young to know, a typewriter was a machine with a keyboard just like today’s computers except you had to put paper on a roller and move a carriage to go from line to line rather than the ENTER button. You had to make your own erasures if you made a misspelling or something rather than the DELETE button with today’s word processors. How primitive. If you don’t believe me though look the term up on Wikipedia, okay. In any case the film under review, a French film with subtitles, Populaire has its plot revolve around the typewriter, or rather who was the faster typist in the West. That designation being left to be fought over by the female part of the human species since in those days the only ones who typed, mainly, were women called secretaries and now called things like administrative assistants and the like. If you don’t believe me on that look that up on Wikipedia while you are looking up typewriter.

Who am I kidding. That typewriter business is just a foil, window dressing for the real deal. As I will flush out below this film is a romance, maybe even a romantic comedy in spots and the typewriter is just the excuse to yet again produce a boy meets girl film of the old 1950s school. That old school being heavy on sexual allure, sexual attraction, and sexual promise but rather light on the act itself unlike today when sexual attraction almost immediately leads to the silky sheets. 

Here’s how this one played out in France in 1959 the great boy meets girl industry that drives the cinematic enterprise. Rose, a small sort of nondescript young woman had been fascinated by the typewriter since her childhood and when she came of age she applied to Louis’ insurance office to be a secretary (I assume you looked that up, right). The problem was that she was a terrible secretary and as far as her typing abilities went she was strictly “hunt and peck” like a lot of us. But fast. Louis seeing a potential champion fast draw typist begins to coach her to type correctly and use her fast hands to win typing competitions. That is where the blood sport comes in since these competitions actually had aficionados who cheered their favorites on. They were even betting on the thing, although I don’t know if they had point spreads and such.  Louis insisted that there be a strict separation between student and coach (even though she wound up living chastely in his house, a big 1950s film convention the chaste part anyway).           

But enough of that. These two have it bad for each other and if we could fast forward to 2016 they would already have been in the downy billows and done with it. But Louis has trouble committing, a not unknown quality among males of the human species, and as Rose keeps winning championships from the local level up to the national championship in Paris that sexual tension increases. Along the way, by the way, Rose turns from that non-descript small town girl to well “hot,” a not unfamiliar cinematic trope (why don’t guys get that same ugly ducking to prince transformation, its’ unfair, totally unfair). They finally “do it” (on camera unlike in the 1950s) but once Rose wins the national championship Louis doesn’t want to hold her back (that same commitment problem really). When Rose, after being feted in Paris as the champ, goes to New York to take on the vicious Yankees (not the baseball team that is a different blood sport but the reigning world champ) for the title of world’s fastest typist Louis finally has an epiphany and flies to New York to cheer her on and take what she had to give. See I told you boy meets girl, classic stuff except at the end I still wondered about who the heck would go to the mat to watch a typing contest. I’ll look that up and let you know. See this one.