Based on the novel by Hannelore Cayre, the story centres around Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert), an underpaid, overworked French-Arabic translator in charge of phone surveillance for a narcotics police unit. When she realises she knows the mother of one of the drug dealers, she decides to cover for her and gets herself more and more involved in the world of drug trafficking. Soon, she is using her insider knowledge and police resources to build her own crime network, and earns the name Mama Weed.
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Dialing back on the icy intensity that has marked many of her memorable roles, the incomparable Isabelle Huppert seizes on the opportunity to let down her hair, or at least pull it back under a hijab in order to moonlight as a Moroccan drug dealer in the comedic crime thriller “Mama Weed.”
Known as “La Daronne” (The Godmother) in its original French release, where the entertaining film shares its name with the bestselling novel by Hannelore Cayre, the multicultural caper nevertheless provides Huppert with ample substance.
A widowed, underpaid French Arabic translator for the Paris police narcotics unit, Patience Portefeux (Huppert) finds herself at a crossroads, seeking something more exciting than being tethered to a pair of headphones monitoring phone conversations among the city’s biggest drug dealers.
The French legend’s star power threads together tones of wit, danger and political substance
Robert Abele | July 14, 2021 @ 4:00 PM
Music Box Films
With a body of work that rivals any performer’s across the history of film, French actress Isabelle Huppert can swan in and out of challenging material with nary a scratch to her matchless reputation. Often, her cool intensity and versatility is what makes that material work, most recently exemplified in her Oscar-nominated turn in Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle.” But sometimes you get what amounts to a perfect fit of risk and skill, leading to sheer delight. That’s the case with the fleet French crime comedy “La Daronne,” translated with a winking nudge into colloquial English, and toward its particular narrative, as “Mama Weed.”