Gorgeous!

Gorgeous! really earns that exclamation point. In this tale set in the City of Lights, director Lisa Azuelos and her co-writers have crafted an inviting comic drama that celebrates the au courant Parisian woman. They’ve whipped up a coterie of breathtaking Sephardic femmes whose witty, rat-a-tat-tat dialogue crackles with energy. The entire film vibrates with their smarts, charm, guile and not an insignificant amount of sex. Isa (Michèle Laroque), Léa (Aure Atika), Alice (Valérie Benguigui) and Nina (Géraldine Nakache) are nobody’s fools as they stare down traditional gender roles, the tax system, the beauty business and the institution of marriage—such as it is in France. Marthe Villalonga is the unforgettable grande dame of this brood. While these winning women execute their various pas de deux and pirouettes, they still have time to be part of a noisy extended family that comes together for the familiar Jewish rituals, which turn out to be a little more on the raucous end of the scale than the traditional. It’s an exquisite picture of modern women, modern life and the practice of Judaism in a very modern Paris.