Gravel’s taut film has something of the Uncut Gems about it, as the heroine, Julie, struggles to survive in the big city against the odds. Julie, separated from the father of her two kids, commutes from a long way out from the centre of Paris, where she has a job as senior chambermaid in a five star hotel. In the week we meet her, strikes are paralysing Paris (plus ça change) and her commute becomes the kind of ordeal any big city dweller knows all too well. The situation is complicated by the fact she’s been invited for a job interview for the kind of job she used to do, before the separation, but in order to attend the interview she has to bunk off work. What with arriving late and having to deal with a Scottish singer who has done a ‘Bobby Sands’, (a touch of black humour which I and one other in the cinema laughed out loud at), and then being invited back for a second interview, Julie finds herself skating on thin ice at work, at a time her ex is failing to pay his share of the bills and her bank account is close to zero. Will Julie make it to the end of the week, or will she throw herself under a train? The tension is ever-present, as Julie flags down lifts to get home and is threatened with being reported to social services. At times the script feels almost sadistic, as though it has been sent to the obstacle lab, but the film painfully succeeds in documenting the first world stress of survival in the urban jungle, even if the ending seems a bit cakeist, as her possible salvation involves plunging right back into the hideous capitalist machine which has brought her to such a pass in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment