The Party's Over (Classe Moyenne)
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Date Reviewed: 22/08/2026
There are compelling parallels between Anthony Cordier and Pedro Almodóvar, particularly in the way The Party’s Over (Classe Moyenne) embraces human messiness, boundary-crossing intimacy and sudden shifts in tone.
Both directors are drawn to characters whose private desires and contradictions disrupt the social order around them. But where Almodóvar tends towards heightened Spanish melodrama, Cordier works within a distinctly French tradition of social realism and class satire.
Visually, however, The Party’s Over has an unmistakably Almodóvar-esque seductiveness. Set largely in an opulent villa on a sun-drenched island in the south of France, the film is awash with striking summer colours, beautiful people and glamorous interiors. Add family dysfunction, sexual tension and a splash of LGBTQ+ themes, and the comparison becomes hard to resist. Yet this visual sumptuousness is a calculated trick.
Cordier uses the seductive setting as a counterpoint to the ugliness unfolding beneath it. This is a film where everyone looks fabulous and almost everyone behaves terribly.
The satire is sharply focused on class warfare and economic friction. The villa becomes an arena for conflict between the wealthy Trousselard family and the poorer Azizi family, who work as caretakers of the estate. Curiously, the middle class is largely absent, which, of course, is precisely what the French title Classe Moyenne draws attention to in a stroke of viting structural irony.
For three months of the year, the wealthy Trousselards expect the Azizi caretakers to be at their beck and call, even interrupting Marylou’s birthday so Tony can repair a sink.
“Strictly speaking, their job is to be here for us when we're here,” Philippe (Laurent Lafitte) says, with the casual entitlement of someone who has never had to question the arrangement.
The uneasy relationship finally fractures when big-shot lawyer Philippe offers Marylou, the caretakers’ daughter, a smartphone as a birthday present and apology. Tony (Ramzy Bedia), who has only been able to afford his daughter a refurbished phone, sees the gesture not as generosity but as an insult. The dispute quickly escalates. Tony loses his job and retaliates with legal threats, while Nadine (Laure Calamy) demands €150,000.
“That isn't a bribe. It's back pay for our dignity.”
Small slights snowball into explosive altercations, and what begins as a workplace dispute becomes an increasingly vicious battle between two families convinced of their own righteousness. Driven by strong pacing and escalating tension, the film rarely allows a scene to overstay its welcome.
Cordier’s characters are morally ambiguous, flawed and self-interested. All seven are compromised in some way: victims become aggressors, the aggrieved become vindictive, and people who consider themselves decent are repeatedly capable of decidedly indecent behaviour.
Much of the film's pleasure lies in its refusal to offer neat hero and villain categories. Everyone has been wronged, but everyone is also capable of wrongdoing.
This moral fluidity is anchored by a superb ensemble cast clearly relishing the opportunity to inhabit characters who swing from charming to appalling in a heartbeat.
The wives are played brilliantly by Elodie Bouchez as Laurence, calm, beautiful and hypocritical, and Laure Calamy as the more volatile Nadine, whose simmering frustration eventually boils over. Their children are equally products of their respective worlds, yet fascinated by each other. Marylou (Mahria Zrouki) and aspiring actress Garance (Noée Abita) inhabit the uneasy space between the two families, while Garance’s boyfriend Mehdi (Sami Outalbali) becomes caught in the middle.
“You act like class doesn't exist because you've never had to look at the bill,” Mehdi tells the privileged Garance during his visit to her family’s island home.
Mehdi soon finds himself the unwitting mediator between Garance’s parents, hoping to smooth things over in exchange for an internship at Philippe’s law firm. He is arguably the film’s most likeable character, although even he is not entirely innocent. A law graduate who has worked his way through university, he is also calculating, exploiting his relationship with Garance in the hope of securing professional advancement.
Yet that makes him one of the film’s most intriguing characters. He is a kind of defector in the class war as someone who understands both sides but belongs comfortably to neither. As tensions escalate, he becomes a reluctant bridge between the families, attempting to mediate a divide that is ultimately much larger than the original dispute.
The film’s dialogue is frequently wickedly funny. In one exchange, Philippe asks Mehdi why Garance chose him over someone else.
“My idealism,” Mehdi replies. Mehdi turns the question around: “Why did Laurence choose you?” “My money,” Philippe answers.
It is a neat exchange that captures Cordier’s cynical view of relationships, privilege and the stories people tell themselves about why they have what they have.
Where The Party’s Over is less successful is in the depth of its exploration. Its ideas about class, privilege and exploitation are intriguing, but the film sometimes seems more interested in the entertaining mechanics of the feud than in fully interrogating the social structures beneath it. The characters’ motivations can also feel deliberately exaggerated, making the social commentary occasionally broader than it is profound.
In comparison, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite pushes its class analysis further, using its characters and increasingly claustrophobic spaces to expose the structural forces that keep the wealthy and poor locked into their respective positions. Cordier is less interested in constructing such a sustained political argument. His approach is lighter, more satirical and more interested in the messy psychology of people behaving badly.
That is not necessarily a weakness. The Party’s Over does not preach, nor does it neatly hand the audience a moral lesson. Instead, it leaves us to navigate the uncomfortable territory between privilege and resentment, exploitation and entitlement, victimhood and revenge. And perhaps that is the film’s most effective trick. It invites us to take sides, then repeatedly gives us reasons to reconsider. Just when we think we know who is in the right, someone behaves badly enough to muddy the picture.
Ultimately, The Party’s Over is less a film about choosing the good side than about exposing how quickly moral certainty can collapse when money, pride and power enter the room. Beneath its gorgeous summer colours and glamorous surroundings is a rather ugly truth: class conflict is rarely clean, and dignity, once wounded, can become just as combustible as privilege.
Highlights
Who's it for
The Party’s Over is ideal for anyone looking for a stylish summer film with more on its mind than beautiful scenery and beautiful people. It will appeal to audiences who enjoy dark comedy, ensemble dramas, class satire and films where family dysfunction gradually spirals out of control.
If you like your holiday movies with a little social warfare, moral ambiguity and plenty of eye candy, this one is worth a look.
Reviewed by Mary Sinanidis