Ressources Humaines (Laurent Cantet, 1999)

Laurent Cantet's first feature deals with big serious sociopolitical questions, a furrow of inquiry he's ploughed steadily since, through to 2008's acclaimed The Class. In Human Resources, he tackles union-employer relations with the advent of the imposed 35-hour-week in French industry. The attention to factual detail is painstaking and could well be painful too if left at that. But it lends a necessary credibility to the main character's crisis of identity as he returns from business school to join the HR department at the provincial factory where his father, a machinist, has ground out a living for the last 30 years.
The father, like most of the shopfloor cast, is played by a lay actor, and this might lay Cantet open to accusations of playing with archetypes rather than original characters. This trap is avoided: the performances are naturalistic enough to confer further authenticity on the whole instead, and also throw the unrooted idealism of Jalil Lespert as the son into stark focus as his slick business facade disintegrates in the face of the human implications of his adopted company's attitude to its disposable employees. The development is utterly predictable, but beautifully played out.
It's an angry polemic, yes, but like the best of Ken Loach, far transcends that in what it drives home about the way we live.

8/10