Le voyage du directeur des ressources humaines

A suicide bomb victim's body lays unclaimed. The only thing known about her is where she worked--a large mechanized bakery.

Turns out the bakery had fired her and now the press coverage doesn't look good for them. She was fired by a supervisor who fell in love with her and he was worried about the personal problems this unrequited love would cause.

A weasel like journalist is trying to smear the bakery and they want to make sure that doesn't happen.

The owner of the bakery also wants to do the right thing and has her human resources manager accompany the body back to Romania where the dead woman had a son and family.

But...where would she really have wanted to be buried??

You get to see a very authentic view of urban and rural Romania the part the tourist brochures don't show.

The one part I did not understand is why she is a Greek Orthodox? Must have been ethnically Jewish although if covered I missed that part.

The film is different and really good. Highly recommend it.

I have not read the book. and I am Romanian. so, profound subjective about the reflection of my country in this movie, in the manner of the details first. and the details are real interesting. the dark sketch of Romanian reality is not real fair. or correct. but it uses an old comfortable recipes about East. the way of the human resources manager and photographer in an exotic/savage country is far to be original and reminds the traditional Jewish perspective about the lands, people and differences. the dark humor, the silence, the adventures with the flavor of Hasidic stories, the music,the relations between characters, the mark of globalization and its selfishness, the similarities with the new wave of Romanian cinematography are the basic virtues. but the good point, for me, remains the presence of Irina Petrescu as the grandmother. she has the necessary , precious art to give to the gray atmosphere depth, remembering its roots and theirs fundamental importance.

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER is not only the main character of this smart, funny, touching film, it is also the theme: dealing with human responses to illogical situations takes skills few people have mastered. Based on the novel 'A Woman in Jerusalem' by Abraham B. Jehoshua, adapted for the screen by Noah Stollman, and directed with great flair by Eran Riklis, this little story begins as a strange tiny seed and grows into a lesson about the sanctity of the human spirit by films end.

A Human Resources Manager (Mark Ivanir is a multifaceted performance) is divorced from his wife (Reymond Amsalem) and only sees his daughter (Roni Koren) on occasion. He has been brought to Jerusalem by The Widow (Gila Almagor) to be the Human Resources Manager to Jerusalem's largest bakery because of his skills, but soon the climate changes: an Romanian ex-employee Yulia has been found dead due to a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, an employee unknown to the HR Manager, and the Press (in the person of 'The Weasel' - Guri Alfi - a looney photographer journalist) decides to make a case of corporate coldness in the situation. The Widow places the possible corporate disaster in the HR Manager's hands, and after much research, it is discovered that the body being kept in the city morgue cannot be buried without a family member 's signature. Yulia's ex-husband (Bogdan E. Stanoevitch) is uncovered but cannot sign for the body's release because the couple was divorced. The HR manager is directed to take the casket to Romania, have Yulia's mother (Irina Petrescu) sign for it, and bury the body there. The men - HR Manager, ex-husband, and Weasel - begrudgingly set off for Romania where they are met by the Israeli Counsel (Rosina Kambus) and her amour (Julian Negulesco) who offer their van and driver (Papil Panduru) to take the body to Yulia's home. At the town where Yulia had lived the group encounters Yulia's son (Noah Silver), a juvenile delinquent whom the father had thrown out of the home. Many conflicts arise before the boy joins the group, takes the body to the boy's grandmother who informs the little groups that Yulia lived and died in Jerusalem and must be returned there to be buried! The van collapses and the HR Manager and Weasel must return the body to Jerusalem in an army tank. It is an ongoing comedy of errors, but in the course of events the HR Manager rediscovers his own soft side of his humanity and learns the importance of human relations within families, towns, governments and people in general.

Though the story is potentially a very sad statement about how immigrants are treated by corporations and how victims of suicide bombings can be all but forgotten, but the writing of script keeps the all too human acts of errors and acts of personal forgiveness beautifully balanced. The entire cast is excellent, but Mark Ivanir as the Human Resources Manager makes the film work - a brilliant, understated performance that spreads over the entire range of human responses and reactions. The film is visually stunning, showing us the beauty of Jerusalem, the devastation of Romania, and the incredibly picturesque winter scenes in Romania's very catholic towns. In Hebrew, English and Romanian with English subtitles. It is a little gem of a film.

Grady Harp

Yulia Petracka was her name and she worked cleaning the largest bakery in Jerusalem, Israel. When she gets killed in a suicide bombing in January 2002, the human resources manager is confronted with insensitivity from the press and pressure to do the right thing. Yulia was a foreigner in Israel, a second class citizen who wasn't even Jewish. She was Romanian Christian immigrant. The Human Resources manager without a name like in the book entitled "A Woman in Jerusalem," goes on a journey to discover this woman's life who touched her son, mother, ex-husband, and a co-worker. He makes the long traveling journey to Romania with the journalist photographer and is met by the Israeli consul at the airport. I actually read and loved the book itself. This movie something that I had to have because I found the book to be passionate, thought-provoking, and brilliant. This film does the book's justice even if it made modifications for the screen. The book and the film reminds us that a person makes a difference, a huge difference when we least expect it, dead or alive.

I interpreted Eran Riklis's "Shlihuto shel Ha'Memuneh al Mash'abey Enosh" ("The Human Resources Manager" in English) as a contrast of cultures. The title character has to go to Romania and finds a world totally different from what he's used to in in ultra-modern Israel. If this movie is to be believed, much of rural Romania looks untouched from the 1950s. I've never been there, so I can't vouch for it.

If that was the purpose, then it succeeded. What I liked was hearing the different languages spoken. What I found questionable was that the movie presented a number of topics but didn't seem interested in fleshing them out all the way.