As thoughtful as it is timely, Laurent Cantet's
Human Resources pulls the subject of office
politics into the new century. The movie is a
complex tale of union-management divisions that
gradually turns into a wrenching father-son
relationship drama.
The protagonist, Frank (played by Jalil
Lespert, the only professional actor in the cast),
is a Parisian business-school student who takes a
position in the human-resources department of the
factory where his submissive, settled father
(Jean-Claude Vallod) has worked for 30 years.
One of Frank's bright new ideas is to survey
the workers about changing to a 35-hour work week.
The union leaders oppose the poll, and so do
some of the workers. They worry that they will
have to work harder for less pay, and that filling
out the form could cause trouble.
"I don't believe in it," says one worker.
"That's your bad luck," says Frank, though the
survey turns out to be bad luck for nearly
everyone. A strike threatens, Frank's father finds
his job in jeopardy and Frank discovers that he
belongs on neither side.
There's a hard-to-define tension in the air
even before Frank comes up with his plan. The
opening scenes, of Frank coming home and adjusting
to changes in his bedroom (which now has bunk
beds), hint at trouble to come.
So do the worries about working with old
friends and possibly losing their respect. The
drama builds gradually to an explosive
confrontation that deftly mixes Lespert's
assurance with the reactions of the nonactors in
the cast.
The script began as a workshop production, shot
on video two years ago with cast members recruited
from unemployment agencies. They were encouraged
to talk about current labor laws, class struggles
and their impact on family life.
Cantet and his co-writer, Gilles
Marchand, then
assembled a script from this material and filmed
it in early 1999 in a small town in Normandy. He
sees the factory as "a microcosm where everything
is exacerbated," and a microcosm that reflects
Frank's family: "These two universes become
increasingly interconnected as we go along, they
feed each other, they answer and explain each
other."
A word-of-mouth hit at the most recent Seattle
International Film Festival, Human
Resources won a jury award in the "New
Directors Showcase" category. Cantet has created a
number of prize-winning shorts and television
films, but this is his first theatrical feature.
The American title is an accurate translation,
suggesting that "a human being is administered the
same way you would administer stocks or capital,"
in Cantet's words. He set out to "play on that
double meaning and go beyond coded administrative
lingo in order to talk about an actual human's
resources."
His film is part of an unofficial series of
French and Belgian movies, including The Dream
Life of Angels, The Little Thief and
Rosetta, that mix actors and nonactors in
order to examine the repercussions of working for
a living, especially in soul-challenging
assembly-line jobs. In many ways, it seems the
most mature.
From Film.com
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