Starring Rossy de Palma. Rated PG

“No one notices a maid.” That’s the truism laid out in this would-be comedy of manners about money and mistaken identity. But if you wanted to say something about the anonymity of the serving class, why hire Rossy de Palma—by far the most extreme-looking veteran of Pedro Almodóvar’s cartoonish movies—to prove your point?

Still, the tall, Picasso-faced de Palma is here as Maria, a housekeeper (not really a maid, in fact) who runs the rented Parisian villa of American expats Anne and Bob Fredericks. They’re played by Toni Collette and Harvey Keitel; he’s a goofy sitcom dad, and she’s the rich bitch in a nighttime soap—or worried about being rich, anyway, since the Fredericks have financial issues.

When Bob’s floppy-haired and decidedly British son from a previous marriage, Steven (Tom Hughes)—a failed novelist and budding alcoholic—shows up unexpectedly at their swanky dinner party, it puts 13 at the table. The superstitious madam won’t tolerate this, so she picks Maria to make an even number, advising her to not talk or drink too much. Guess how well that goes.

In Paris to facilitate the sale of a rare Caravaggio painting, gentle Irishman David (Michael Smiley) shows an interest in the newly dressed-up “guest”, and Bob spins a yarn about Maria being Spanish royalty. The help has an untapped knowledge of dirty jokes in several languages. This drives David mad with desire, but just makes Anne madder.

In a long dinner sequence notable for its lack of food or basic geography—the camera occasionally pulls back to show us people previously unseen—the visiting Steven is seated next to Bob’s, ahem, “French teacher” (Joséphine de La Baume), whom he suddenly harasses and humiliates. In response, the young woman says and does absolutely nothing.

This is doubly shocking, because this half-baked Cinderella story’s writer-director, with the odd nom de film Amanda Sthers, is herself a young woman, one who presents this behaviour as “cute”. She’s also uninterested in providing the other characters, including de Palma’s, with any contradictory shading or believable back story. A career low for everyone involved, Madame is a condescending, poorly told, and deeply unfunny film that would have been a dud at any point in history. But it feels especially off right now.