La loi du marché

This is a Mike Leigh/Ken Loach-style drama, great contemporary social realism, French style, and all the better for it.

A middle-aged man's existence becomes precarious after he's laid-off from his skilled job. Transitioning via the unemployment industry to supermarket security guard is the challenge for our hero. His dialogue with petty bureaucracy is obviously the same in France as it is here. There is claustrophobia and frustration with the relentless, compassionless uselessness of the so-called support.

Witnessing with him a check-out worker's send-off after a lifetime on the job is suitably excruciating. The young, new boss has the honour of fare-welling simple, loyal Gisele who always smiles and was never late in 32 years; a career trajectory from the check-out to the deli section.

The little guy or gal, when he falls out of work, is screwed, especially if he's in his 50's. There are themes of the exploitation and degradation of working life and also of the demands of caring for a disabled dependent.

The story evolves slowly, documentary style, long takes in naturalistic settings. We experience the frustrations and humiliations of the unemployment industry through his jobnetwork appointments and programs. Futlity is a theme.

There are many lovely features and brilliant, understated acting mainly from Vincent Lindon who received a five-minute standing ovation at the Cannes premiere and went on to win the best actor prize both there and in the Cesar Awards.

This is a story about personal principles in our times; a disturbing look at the banal cruelty of modern employment and the struggles and battles of life more generally. When Mike Leigh and Ken Loach have lost their mojo, director Stéphane Brizé picks up the baton for the prols and gives the audience a measured, low-key, steadily building drama with big pay-offs.

The Measure of a Man is quite gut-wrenching and brilliant in its simultaneous simplicity and complexity. It should be compulsory viewing for all supermarket managers & Centrelink and Jobnet (Australia) employees.

Let's Go To The Pictures, Three D Radio, Andrew Bunney

I love this kind of film. Fly on the wall and powerful. Nothing is spoon fed. It's one of the best ways to develop characters if its done well, and here the character journey is exceptional. Outstanding take on modern times and dealing with it. Thanks film makers. It's nice to have a break from violence and cheap thrills.

A very fine movie about life in the modern global economy. First the hero is cheated by a so-called training business center when he finds out there's no chance of his being hired for what he was trained in and the business knew it (see Trump and his so-called university -- but what do we expect from an illiterate egomaniac?). The hero who is barely hanging on to middle class life by his fingernails is constantly humiliated or badgered by experts who are "trying" to help. He winds up with a job at a box store in security where he sees people/customers humiliated, long term clerks fired for minor infractions caught on CCTV (that's the object, the co. -- a Walmart copycat -- is trying to trim down the staff and goes after long-term employees, one of whom commits suicide on the store premises). The hero also has a son with multiple sclerosis who has to pass inspection in order to qualify for college. This is what the social/economic net boils down to. The director is telling the truth ...

A Ken Loach-a-like - showing real lives at a genuine pace, but without the hard edge. If the movie set out to show the crushing mundanity of the the lives of working class people, it succeeds. However, do not be put of by this, as the main protagonist manages to demonstrate a dignity throughout. Nevertheless, do not expect a hubris- cum-nemesis tale. It looks at the workaday politics that the majority of life's cannon fodder are forced to negotiate. A scene in which his performance at interview is analysed by peers is upsetting, demonstrating the schadenfreude characteristic of the socially-challenged, enjoying the notion that somebody is worse off than themselves... If you like Loach derivatives, you will certainly enjoy this.

LA LOI DU MARCHÉ's main quality is its honesty. Lindon, as the cdntral character, portrays the current Everyman, with the added burden of a handicapped child, which makes things that much more difficult. Lindon's performance is first class in its simplicity and honesty, but his wife, and his fellow workers also do very well in their smaller parts.

Direction is interesting, often using cinema verité moves, and it keeps targeting the sordid nature of human survival in the current world.

This is the problem we all face: we work to survive and, as we do, we compete with others also trying to survive, and we survive by ratting on them, and exposing the illegalities they commit. Given that no human is a saint, it is obvious that it is only a matter of time before you find somehing to send someone out of the "paradise" of employment. And once that has happened, the way back into the job market is well nigh impossible.

That is the law of the market, a law where human rights are easily trampled under the weight of economic and performance considerations, and where spying on, and suspecting, fellow human beings is bread and butter.

Lindon's character is looking hard for a job to meet his child's treatment's costs, and he has to accept duties that most of us would probably feel dismayed about. And so does he, and that is his moral dilemma by movie's end.

LA LOI DU MARCHÉ is not easy to watch, but its honesty makes it a must.