At a time when laws change daily to restrict women’s bodily autonomy, protect men from accountability and reinstate antiquated values that benefit a few at the expense of the many, sexual politics can feel more regressive than ever. But as uneven a playing field as women may face against men in their lives, relationships and careers, “Ladies First” is a movie that seems like it’s made less for this moment than one a few generations ago.
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosmund Pike, this Netflix remake of Éléonore Pourriat’s 2018 romcom “I Am Not an Easy Man” (the first French-language film ever commissioned by the streamer) follows a male chauvinist who awakens in a world where power dynamics between men and women are reversed. Yet even working from a script cowritten by Natalie Krinsky (“The Broken Hearts Gallery”) and Katie Silberman (“Booksmart”) and directed by Thea Sharrock (“Me Before You,” “Wicked Little Letters”), the film’s largely female creative team offers few insights about gender that weren’t previously explored in “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” much less a dozen other switcheroo romantic comedies like “What Women Want.”
Cohen plays Damien Sachs, a lothario helpfully described upfront by the film’s narrator, Pigeon Man (Richard E. Grant), as “an asshole.” Though he’s poised to become CEO at the Atlas advertising agency where his mentor Fred (Charles Dance) is set to retire, the shareholders believe the company’s management is too top-heavy with men, and insist that a woman be considered for the role. Damien enlists his long-suffering assistant Ruby (Weruche Opia) to find a female employee — any employee — to join his ranks and alleviate claims of sexism, but when she selects the eminently qualified Alex (Pike), he makes it abundantly clear that she’s there to facilitate progressive optics, not actually participate in running Atlas.
She soon quits, but as Damien chases her out of the building, he’s so consumed by the opportunity to dress her down one last time that he knocks himself unconscious smashing into a pole. When he awakens, he discovers that women have replaced men (and vice versa) in virtually every societal role. Learning from Pigeon Man that he’s been given an opportunity to learn an important life lesson, Damien returns to work, where Alex is set to become CEO, Atlas’ former receptionist Felicity (Fiona Shaw) is currently CEO, and janitor Glenda (Kathryn Hunter) owns the entire company.
Though initially humbled by a world where women run everything and men fight for recognition, Damien adapts uneasily to the power imbalance and decides to pursue the CEO role alongside Alex. What he soon discovers is that decades of entrenched control, now by women, is extremely difficult to reverse, and it feels quite demeaning to the men who support them, much less aspire to achieve at their same level. Facing off against a cutthroat competitor like Alex, Damien sees a lot of his former behavior from a new perspective — and he doesn’t like it. But as the two of them grow closer, even in their enmity, he is unsure how to move forward without relinquishing some of the power he once felt entitled to.
“Ladies First” offers some valuable lessons to men who take their spouses, female coworkers and other women in their lives for granted, but they do not seem likely to watch this film. It better serves its female audience with the escapist fantasy that they can treat others with disregard, indulge their basest impulses and still maintain control of their households, offices and social spaces. One of the film’s most delicious scenes involves Shaw’s Felicity, wearing a terrycloth robe that casually exposes her body, inviting Damien to her corporate penthouse for a bit of sexual quid pro quo. In another, she and Alex down highballs and feast on steak and burgers at a business dinner while Damien meekly orders a green salad.
The problem with a premise like this is that, among many other realities, female CEOs or titans of industry are no longer uncommon. Barry Levinson’s “Disclosure” traded on the magic realism of cyberspace and the hyper-fantasy of a sexually harassing Demi Moore, but otherwise explores many of the same issues as this film, and it was released in 1994. The statute of limitations will never run out on stories about entitled jerks receiving a well-deserved comeuppance, but what would be more interesting in 2026 is a scenario in which one of these overprivileged CEOs watches his world dismantled after already realizing that his point of view is regressive.
Instead, the most interesting read on “Ladies First” is a metatextual one, where Cohen’s most famous creation, the cheerfully chauvinistic Borat, gets emotionally vivisected by Pike’s calculating “Gone Girl” character, Amy Dunne. In Damien’s “man” office, framed photos hang of Brigitte Bardot, and you’d like to believe it’s not just the late actress’ sex symbol status but her deeply problematic views about women and minorities that earned her space on his walls. Meanwhile, the gag of ubiquitous gender-switched book titles (“Monsieur Bovary,” “Donna Quixote”) and brand names (Victor’s Secret, Burger Queen) feels belabored, and a female-sung rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” feels too on-the-nose.
One supposes that casting the self-described “lanky, hairy” Cohen as an inveterate lady killer only reinforces the film’s send-up of men who unreasonably believe they’re God’s gift to women. But Sharrock’s unwillingness to minimize Pike’s beauty and versatility — even just in Damien’s man’s world — makes her too transparently impressive; compare Alex to Rachel McAdams’ Linda Liddle in “Send Help,” who’s not only dowdy and has bad skin but a personality that tests audience sympathies, and Pike’s regal transformation in the women’s world feels a bit like a missed opportunity.
Shaw and Hunter, meanwhile, seem to be having the time of their lives as the women with the most BDE in the room, and watching Dance sheepishly deliver a coffee to Alex as she patronizingly calls him her “cashmere angel” is a delight to behold after seasons of him wielding medieval authority on TV.
Decades after “What Women Want” (much less Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s men-versus-women sparring in “When Harry Met Sally,” and any number of other battle-of-the-sexes movies), are there still massive gender inequalities to combat? Of course. But is a female CEO as anachronistic a sight as a horse in a hospital? Definitely not as much this film would have you believe. Rather than stirring a debate, or even inspiring deeper cultural introspection, Sharrock and her collaborators deliver a trifle. For a satire about progress, “Ladies First” relies on far too many ideas from the past — cinematic even more than cultural.
Leave a Reply