IT'S A LIVING
by Chris Dashiell

In an age of reaction, when the Clintons are actually considered by some to be leftists, and pundits refer to the middle class without acknowledging the existence of an upper or lower one, it is difficult to imagine a real left wing or even a vital labor movement. In Europe things are a little different. Class divisions have a longer history and are more overt. Which isn't to say that corporate culture doesn't dominate there as it does here, in film and otherwise. But when's the last time you saw an American film about labor unrest, other than a documentary? We want to escape when we go to a movie theater, so they say, and the last thing we want to be reminded of is work. Well, Laurent Cantet's HUMAN RESOURCES is a French film that does just that, and manages to be interesting, involving and dramatic without violating the bounds of naturalism.

Franck (Jalil Lespert) returns from business school in Paris to work as a management intern at the factory in his home town where his father has worked for thirty years as a welder. His project is to help facilitate a transition to the 35-hour work week which is being negotiated between management and the union. He finds resistance from both sides - his boss doesn't think it can be done without hurting profits, and many of the workers, including his father, are sceptical that the idea will make their lives any better.

The young man is naive about class tensions and animosities, believing that a management-sponsored referendum on the question can help bring the two sides together. As played by the handsome Lespert, he carries himself with a mild diffidence and shyness which is charming, but which also indicates an unsureness about his new position. Old working class friends distance themselves from him because they now see him as different, one of "them." His father desperately wants him to escape his own fate and become a manager, always advising him to accomodate and submit to the status quo.

The factory workers are all played by non-professional actors, actual laborers that Cantet found on the unemployment line. Most remarkable is Jean-Claude Vallod, who plays the father. His gruffness with his family, his passive gaze, the way he hunches over his machine, have an authenticity that can't be faked. He is inarticulate and distant from Franck, yet there is a bond between father and son that, as their relationship experiences a crisis, becomes very moving. The film is as much about the constrictions of class within the characters, and within the dynamics of the family, as it is about the outward struggle for workers' rights.

Cantet's style is natural, straightforward, sensitive. Although the storyline follows a fairly standard trajectory, there's no melodrama to heighten the effect or tell us how to feel. This is perhaps the most accessible labor movie I've seen. The fact that it eventually takes sides may seem strange to American audiences who are used to films that play it safe by being "even-handed." In my view, it's a strength, and Human Resources is a message film that works.

For the rural poor in China, the issues may be similar but conditions are considerably more harsh. Veteran director Zhang Yimou has often walked an ideological tightrope in order to get his films made at all. In NOT ONE LESS his socially critical side is somewhat muted, but this story of an inexperienced teacher in a country school has its rewards if you know how to be open to them.

A village schoolmaster needs to leave for a month to tend to a family emergency. To his dismay, the substitute sent by the local authorities is a 13-year old girl, only a few years older than the students she is supposed to instruct, and lacking in even the most basic teaching skills. After initial resistance, he leaves her in charge, with the admonition that she won't be paid if any of her students drop out of school - "not one less" student should be there when he returns.

After this set-up, I was ready for an inspirational story about a young teacher who overcomes the odds. But Zhang is too subtle a director for that. His heroine, played by an actual schoolgirl named Wei Minzhi, is no fountain of inspiration. She is a frightened kid who is determined to make her money, and this self-centered motive seems to drive everything she does. She is always either scowling or looking worried, and she can't keep her unruly students from fighting each other, much less teach them. One of her charges (the engaging Zhang Huike, another kid playing himself) is a smiling troublemaker who throws her into a panic when he drops out and goes to the big city to get a job. With a single-mindedness which borders on the maniacal, the substitute decides to get to the city somehow and bring the boy back. The second part of the film concerns her search through the bewildering urban landscape, the impersonal world of the city putting seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her way at every step.

Zhang has perhaps the keenest sense for conveying the passage of time of any living director. The incredibly stubborn quality of this girl, her aggressiveness with others in pursuing her goals, the sheer endurance she displays by repeating actions or trying any number of different things to get what she wants, is perfectly reflected in Zhang's long takes and patient attention to the details of her journey. The effect is to get to know this ignorant person on a level that is deeper than the usual identification, and to care about the outcome of her blind struggle. On the surface, Not One Less is a plea for education in the countryside. Underneath that, Zhang creates a beautiful sense of tension between an inarticulate, grasping soul that could be any of us at that age, and the overpowering sense of the world arrayed against it. While it doesn't have the thematic sweep or depth of his major works (the resolution seems emotionally pat as well) it has a style and feeling of its own that stamps it as wholly the work of an artist.

CineScene 2000