Eine einmalige Chance

The protagonist in this movies is young Philip. He has chosen (or received) a career in a big consultancy company in Paris that specializes in restructuring company. He meets a girl in the Paris metro he fancies and they get together.

Throughout the movies Philip goes from feeling happy to feeling very frustrated. This movie is not about maniac managers, single mothers looking for a partner or regular people fearing redundancies.

Philip is the focus of this movie. Although occasionally we get a glimps of the secrets of the people Philip is dealing with the story is really about him and the relationships with them.

This boy is young and doesn't understand the people close to him. He doesn't understand his boss because his boss what to let Philip go through what he went through when he was he junior. His boss believes this is the only way to the top, which is where he wants Philip to end. In the end his boss gets his way not because he's good but because he is the only person Philip knows that has plans for him.

Philip doesn't understand his girlfriend. This director really got it right by showing the spectator what Philip apparently doesn't see. These moments make the movie very good.

Philip has to interview workers of a company he and his boss are restructuring. Philip can't deal with them because he doesn't know his own emotions very well. His boss helps him by putting him back on track after Philip wants to quit the mission. Although the movie doesn't show how his boss does this I bet he did it by telling Philip about the emotions Philip is feeling that prevent him from doing his right. Since Philip doesn't know his own emotions this probably impresses him so much that he agrees to continue although he wanted to quit. His boss offers Philip something he longs for but can't get to by himself - understanding his own emotions - so his boss becomes the most important person to Philip.

His girlfriend, her little daughter, her mother, the workers all loose something because Philip doesn't know how to deal with himself. This is truly a sad story but also a very good movie. You liked Dogville maybe you'll like this as well.

The title in English for this film is "Work Hard, Play Hard", which is the slogan for the McGregor group, the company at the center of the story. Of course, it bears no resemblance with the original French title that perhaps makes more sense.

This film deals with the realities of what is happening in the work place today. It's sort of a universal phenomenon in which the fate of people that have given their lives working for a company, suddenly, face an uncertain future. A few of them will end unemployed because these workers are expendable.

Director Jean Marc Moutout presents us with the intrigues within a successful company. Philippe Seigner, a young and talented would-be executive type, is hand picked by his immediate superior, not because of his credentials, but because the boss thinks he can carry out the hatchet job without any qualms. Since Laurent has no scruples, he expects nothing else from his subordinate.

Philippe meets and falls in love with the single mother, Eva, who sees in the young man someone she can love. Alas, Philippe will surprise her with an unusual turn of events that will separate the two lovers forever.

The acting is first rate. Jeremie Renier seems to be a natural actor. Cylia Malki and Laurent Lucas, are quite good, as is the rest of an ensemble cast under the sure direction of M. Moutout.

I felt a lot with this movie, specially after the ending, it all made sense. I have seldomly heard better placed music, it goes right to the point of emphasizing the climates, but without having a clear "message". It's suggestive, not omnipresent and telling you what to think. I am more of a "classical music" person, but in this case, rock or whatever modern it is that they are playing, for once transmits feelings and nuances, while not intruding with the story.

When I read the synopsis I feared another: "Ressources humaines" (1999), which already copied "Wall Street" and others. We all know the story: "the young brash executive coming up with the best CV. is recruited for doing the 'dirty work' at a company that's reducing personnel. He's a sensitive chap, probably a love interest makes him suffer a bit for the laying off he's got to do, but the 'big time' comes when in the list he sneaks out the name of his dad or some other 'helpless relative/ significant other' and then his morale has to come to terms with the fact that 'it's not only numbers, it's your dad'".

As the young men were listening to classical music in a super car I thought: "the same scene than in "Ressources" (where the boss listens to Vivaldi, and that creates a striking contrast between the dirty job they've got to undertake. Besides, it is intended to show how "elitist and far removed from reality" the executives are). Well, no.

Philippe Seigner is a human being, feels sorry for the people he's got to lay off, but he's also human, he wants to succeed, and he also sees (after a very good telling off by his young boss) that the workers aren't exactly good to him either. What I liked about this film it's that it's not "linear" like RH. In here there's not a big "discovery of the truth" like the structuralists would want us to (remember, Levi Strauss and the other Frenchmen, at the Uni :)?). For instance, the employee who resisted Philippe more, after being disgusting to him and to the female lawyer, shows his humanity later in a heartbreaking scene. One may not share his methods, but his logic is clear, he's a man with good principles, and his "they are all good" reply to the questionnaire makes sense afterwards. He's protecting his stuff from what he perceives as a menace. Not a random "baddie", who turns out to be intelligent afterwards, like the union's delegate at RH. Eva is fine as a manipulative beauty. Her mother has one of the best lines: "Don't bring your daughter too much (...) Men don't talk much, and when they do, it's too late".

The "casting" Philippe does is fine, in that in a few glimpses it's as if you didn't need to ask more, you know what it's going to happen to this employees. His chief is very good, again, when he scolds him: "I chose you BECAUSE you care, for I wanted the employees to be heard and feel understood, not just laid off". This movie is universal in that the realities it shows, like older people not being able to come to terms with technology or changes so much, happen anywhere. Not just in the first world. Those employees could be in any factory in the world. Here in Latin America for instance. I'm glad a French film could attain that: many are a bit self centered and gleefully showing the French well, themselves.