Sarah Duhamel

Léontine helps her pal Rosalie (Sarah Duhamel) race against time to clean up a house after Rosalie’s boss, Baron von Hummen, announces that he and Madame will return home earlier than planned. They recruit workers and poach resources from a nearby construction site. As we see, it takes a village to tidy a house on short notice (or at least it should!), but there’s a limit to the capacities of even collective domestic labor. Accelerated productivity gives way to sheer physical anarchy and irreversible destruction. Dirt and debris pervade every surface—furniture and skin alike—leading to several unfortunate blackening gags.

Rosalie and Léontine go to the theater and are swept away by big emotions.

When Patouillard meets another woman at a street cafe, his jealous wife dresses up as a man in a suit and beard to spy on him.

Rosalie moves into an apartment building, disturbing her neighbors above, below, and next to her.

Pétronille's husband jockey, Tortillard, face-plants in the middle of the track. She puts on his clothes and mounts his steed, “despite her rotund build” at 100 kilos. She leads the other riders on an off-track equestrian escapade, eventually making it back to the course.

In a playful, reflexive take on the familiar “last-minute rescue” formula, a woman and her housekeeper left alone at home miss-read shadows projected from the street outside and fear a violent assault. Male police officers dispatched to rescue them correctly diagnose the situation, with hilarious results, including a late gender reveal. Notable for its early use of triptych.

A jolly housekeeper brings new meaning to the notion of “home entertainment” with a handsome new portable phonograph that causes people, furniture, and buildings to rock and roll through the magic of stop-motion animation. (MoMA)

Anarchic physical destruction