With
the end of the summer blockbuster season, it's once again safe for
thinking cinephiles to begin making their way back into the
theaters. And there are few better ways to do it than French
director Laurent Cantet's debut feature, Human Resources, a
factory-oriented drama in which all the actors save one are actually
factory workers chosen from France's unemployment lines.
Human
Resources tells the story of Franck (Jalil Lespert, the film's lone
professional actor), a college student who takes an internship in
the human resources department in the factory at which his father
has fed bolts into a machine for 30 years.
It
doesn't take long for this obvious conflict of interest to create
trouble. Franck sits in on a union-management meeting on the 35-hour
work week. The communist workers' union ！ still bitter over the
recent financially motivated dismissal of several members ！ wants
no part of the negotiations and refuses to co-operate.
Afterward,
Franck naively suggests management conduct its own poll of the
workers ！ to see what they want for themselves and whether the
union supports their position. Franck is encouraged to draw up a
survey, which he will then conduct himself.
It
is of little surprise when the crafty management types co-opt
Franck's idealistic, misguided attempts to help. When the young
intern files his report, it is the factory's management (who also
help shape the report) rather than he who presents it to the
executives of the parent company.
Meanwhile,
Franck discovers that at the same meeting in which his report is
being presented, the executives will decide to dismiss more
employees, including his father. Suddenly, Franck finds himself on
the side of the labor union he's unknowingly been combating all
along. He also ends up in a showdown with his father (Jean-Claude
Vallod), who's unwilling to protest the firings for fear of ruining
his son's promising career as an executive. But he has his own
internal conflict as well. How can he go back to school and become
an executive who will make decisions such as the one that has torn
his family asunder?
Cantet's
film is one of the most cynical in recent memory, and its cynicism
resonates because the cast is composed of actual factory workers,
labor organizers and executives, who also helped script much of the
movie. This, along with Cantet's decision not to score the film,
gives Human Resources a palpable, documentary feel. It's extremely
pro-worker not because Cantet takes sides, but because it painfully
and objectively illustrates the corporation's ability to play
financial hardball with the weakened, modern-day union. The end
result is nothing short of heart-wrenching.
The
performances ！ if they can be called that ！ are outstanding,
particularly those of the union leader Mrs. Arnoux (Danielle Melador),
and Alain, a factory worker whom Franck befriends (Didier
Emile-Woldemard). It is clear the film's players are painfully aware
of how these hot-button issues affect their lives both before and
after the making of this movie. The lines of worry on Franck's
father's face are genuine, and the outrage of Mrs. Arnoux could only
be captured by someone who has actually fought the battle in the
trenches.
What's
more, the factory scenes ！ filmed in a Renault factory while
workers were trying to meet production quotas ！ are intensely
real. The bodies huddling over the assembly line machines look as if
they've been doing this work for decades and not as if they belong
to a stiff group of pretending-to-work actors who will never again
set foot inside a manufacturing plant.
But
not only the workers deserve praise, for by putting themselves in
such an unquestionably pro-labor motion picture, Cantet's executives
silently acknowledge the flaws and inequalities inherent in factory
hierarchy, which Cantet describes in the film's production notes as
"a magnifying glass to study relationships between
people...inequalities are sharper than anywhere else."
Ultimately,
the film succeeds because of its intense realism, as well as the
broad social questions it raises (and answers): Can management and
labor ever trust one another? Is it possible for parents to instill
in their children a sense of class mobility without also creating a
sense of shame about their parents? Can you ever escape the class
into which you're born?
Cantet's
decidedly European answer to all of these questions is
"no," but it will be interesting to see how the film plays
in the Land of Opportunity.
From Flak
Magazine
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