One Woman or Two

One Woman or Two (French: Une femme ou deux) is a 1985 French screwball romantic comedy film directed by Daniel Vigne [fr], who co-wrote the screenplay with Élisabeth Rappeneau. It stars Gérard Depardieu, Sigourney Weaver, Ruth Westheimer and Michel Aumont.

The film is a rework of the 1938 American screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Shy paleontologist/archaeologist (Gérard Depardieu) makes an archeological find of the fossil remains of the first, two-million-year-old, French woman, whom he calls Laura. He is approached and conned by a crass and greedy American model and Madison Avenue advertising executive (Sigourney Weaver), masquerading as a charity organisation executive in order to use the woman for her own perfume advertising campaign.

Later the real charity organisation executive, ditzy rich American patroness of the sciences (Ruth Westheimer, in her feature film debut) turns up ... it all develops from there.

• Gérard Depardieu as Julien Chayssac
• Sigourney Weaver as Jessica Fitzgerald
• Ruth Westheimer as Mrs. Heffner
• Michel Aumont as Pierre Carrière
• Zabou Breitman as Constance Michaux
• Tannis Vallely as Zoé

Most of the dialogue in the film is in French, including that of Weaver (an American) and Westheimer (originally from Germany). This would not have been difficult for Westheimer, who had lived in Switzerland and France and had studied and taught at the Sorbonne in the 1950s.

The film was shot in France (much of it in Paris) and New York City. French paleontologist Yves Coppens advised on the film.

Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert wrote of this film in a half star review, "Add it all up, and what you've got here is a waste of good electricity. I'm not talking about the electricity between the actors. I'm talking about the current to the projector." In 2005 he included it on his most-hated films list.

Richard Harrington, writing for The Washington Post said: "it's funny enough, and genial in the way French comedy tends to be."

• One Woman or Two at IMDb 
• One Woman or Two at Rotten Tomatoes
• One Woman or Two at the TCM Movie Database
• A Woman or Two, in the Time Out film guide