In the drug trade caper Mama Weed, cop-turned-dealer Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert) laboriously drags heavy blocks of hashish to a dark hiding place, ready for sale. Huppert is revered for bringing diamond-hard intelligence and icy cool to any part she plays, and the sight of her schlepping unwieldy blocks of dope evokes a comparison to the actress herself dragging her talents to languish in a slight, down-market caper. If la Huppert was going to go slumming, she ought to have let her hair (and hauteur) down a little more and found a funnier vehicle for her comedic talents. 

Patience works at a Paris police station, listening in on and translating drug dealers’ phone calls in Arabic. The very white Huppert is cast as a woman with a Maghreb background, perhaps questionably so in a country like France with many notable actors of actual North African descent. It’s an unlikely choice that immediately gets the film off on an odd footing. Anyway, Patience owes back rent on her apartment and fees to her ailing mother’s nursing home, which is threatening to throw maman on the street. And she’s involved in a low-energy, not-quite-a-romance with her boss (Hippolyte Girardot), a decent enough mec, but older and a bit of a square.

Life is rather dull for Patience, who alludes from time to time to a more risqué past. Doesn’t she deserve a little more excitement? When Patience finds out that her mother’s nurse in the old folk’s home happens to be the mother of a dealer transporting a massive haul, she impulsively and covertly switches sides, tipping off the dealer to escape pursuit and certain arrest. This turncoat act sets her up with a vast quantity of drugs and propels Patience on a busy life of crime. Car chases, handoffs, and undercover episodes will go down, none with any great sense of urgency. 

Those around Patience are a broadly defined bunch, to put it kindly. Her mother (Liliane Rovère) is blowsy and coarse, the criminals she deals with sport foolish hip-hop wear and nervously flub deals, and her avaricious Chinese landlord (Jade Nadja Nguyen) plays into a Dragon Lady caricature with underworld connections and a sinister lisp. Throughout her encounters with these over-the-top characters, Patience never breaks a sweat. Huppert plays her usual controlled, detached self, perhaps a little more game than usual, and at times appears to be sauntering through a different movie than her hammy fellow actors. It seems churlish to criticize a film for something it is not, but it would have been fun to see Huppert let loose with the kooky crew around her.

However, Huppert revels in a makeover scene where, posing as a wealthy dealer, she’s outfitted with a high-fashion, maxi-bling hijab. Shot in slo-mo, the sequence is visually driven and clever. Maybe a cerebral run at comedy will prove a stronger match for the talents of this great actress, who should have been integrated more easily and completely into Mama Weed’s action.