After in particular The law of the market and In war, the French filmmaker of commitment and finesse Stéphane Brizé finds his favorite actor, Vincent Lindon. Here it is through Another world in the skin of a company boss overwhelmed by the demands of the multinational who pulls the strings of his factory, forcing him relentlessly to squeeze his team’s lemon.
These three films form an in-depth and powerful trilogy on the dehumanized working environment. This time, Lindon camps with his unique humanity and chest a man of power. As unhappy as the workers under his command, Philippe sees himself forced into a nervous breakdown by the concessions that the top of the pyramid enjoins him to make. We are far from the Manichaean universes where certainties reign and where the good guys face the bad guys.
With its often skilful editing, Another world is the best completed of the triptych. Multiple cameras and renewed viewing angles bring new prisms to the action. The hero sees himself portrayed in all the psychological recesses of his consciousness. As for the often magnificent framing, they give the film a neat aesthetic on the lookout for the slightest detail of truth. We refer to Human ressources, by Laurent Cantet, who also addresses the consequences of the quest for profit. Hovers higher the tutelary shadow of Modern times, of Charlie Chaplin, where the wheel turns by carrying the men.
Between the professional misery of this boss and the family setbacks caused by his distress, the continual back and forth between the spheres promotes identification with the character strangled by his white collar. His dignity transcends the small arrangements with the system to which he agrees so as not to lose everything, before turning his back, looking for solutions. Philippe suddenly abandons his wife (Sandrine Kiberlain, always impeccable, with a minimalist game) and his autistic son. At work, meetings with employees are explosive, relations with the multinational, maddening. The former journalist Marie Drucker embodies with icy majesty the puppeteer who holds the strings above Philippe’s head; itself in the pay of American interests and Wall Street. All pawns of a system that leads the planet of humans towards its abyss.
The infernal machine
If they marry skillfully, the intimate segments turn out to be less powerful than the professional part without losing their emotional power and their aesthetic qualities. It is the chessboard of the infernal machine that fascinates. Stéphane Brizé and his co-screenwriter, Olivier Gorce, had extensively documented themselves with executives revolted by the inhumanity of the world of work. Their fiction reflects a real disarray.
In this universe of culture of profit at all costs, cheating, lying, cynicism are the stations of the cross for the hero carrying a moral who, at each level, comes up against beings who hold discourse to the glory of triumphant capitalism, even understanding its workings. This moral crisis is at the heart of a film which, without the touch of the filmmaker, could have fallen into didacticism. Thanks to the complex character played by Lindon, the drama of dehumanization is lived in the flesh of an honest man in a climate of suspense. Thus, Philippe will be called upon to decide between his principles and his position. If the outcome seems weaker, the mechanics of this film remain implacable. Its well-woven script, great acting performances and the spider-web camera that entangles its prey carry it and haunt us.
Another world tackles a universal subject with lively sensitivity and great intelligence, inviting the spectator to essential questions, without misleading him on the way.