Human Resources
dir. Laurent Cantet
Haut et Court / Shooting Gallery

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.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)