Life for Thierry (Vincent Lindon) a fifty-year-old something machinist seems to get tougher and tougher since he was laid off from his job as a result of the latest economic downtown that is devastating the French provincial town that he lives in with his family. In the months since he has been unemployed he has done all the right things to find work, but to no avail. In the opening scenes we see him very politely telling a Employment Counsellor that the extensive crane-operating training course he has just been ‘encouraged’ to take was a complete waste of time, as no-one will give a job with his total lack of experience. It is something that the Official is well aware off, but Thierry’s limited welfare benefits are based on him being seen to be active in his search for work, and this is one such way to do just this.
His wife is silently supportive but they have a teenage child with special needs and the new school that he is about to transfer too is expensive and their welfare checks will not cover the fees. There is an uncomfortable scene when Thierry tries to sell the family’s vacation trailer home and he is bullied into unrealistically drastically lowering the price by a couple who scent that he is desperate for funds. If that is not bad enough he also has to suffer the indignity of being patronized by a young yuppy Bank Manger who suggests to raise funds that he simply sell the family home and buy some life insurance as he isn’t getting any younger.
Then out of the blue he lands a job work as a security man in a large supermarket on what is euphemistically called ‘loss prevention’. He is under great pressure by his bosses looking to cut costs to carefully watch not just the shoppers but also his co-workers for any attempts, no matter how minor, at stealing from the store. As a life-long committed Union man, Thierry finds the latter part which requires spying on his colleagues, particularly difficult as like him, even with their jobs, they are barely making a living wage.
Each of the sad small incidents of pilfering that he has to get involved in eat away at his conscience. There is an elderly man caught stealing meat and who would be normally be set free if he agreed to pay up, but he has no money at all. One cashier was caught hoarding discount coupons, and another is scanning her own ‘loyalty card’ to get points from customers purchases and they are fired on-the-spot even though the former had just been honored with a party for her long service to the store.
It’s a simple sad story that politicizes the effects of economic slumps that have been created by large anonymous corporations, but yet the brunt of the effects are borne by the working population who are just helpless cogs in the wheel. In Thierry’s case it is the immorality of trying to make a good old-fashioned Socialist like him abandon his long-held principles to actually become part of a system that contributes to destroying other working peoples lives. It is therefore no shock to discover that eventually he will resist in order to keep a hold on to both his beliefs and his dignity.
Veteran actor Linden is pitch perfect as the world-weary and laconic Thierry and his performance won him the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie also reunites him with writer/director Stéphane Brizé with whom he made Mademoiselle Chambon in 2009. This very modest movie is both slow to unwind and moves at the most gentle of paces which may test some people’s patience, but is well worth the journey by the end.
