Riens du tout (1992)

Riens du tout is a French film comedy first released in 1992, directed by Cédric Klapisch.  The film stars Fabrice Luchini, Daniel Berlioux, Marc Berman, Olivier Broche and Antoine Chappey.  It has also been released under the title: Little Nothings.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


The owners of a failing department store are planning to close it down, but offer one final reprieve.  The store will remain open if its new manager, Monsieur Lepetit, can significantly improve its sales figures.  Lepetit decides that the key to success is the human factor, and so he embarks on a grand campaign to galvanise his staff to work as a team, by introducing radically new methods.  However, the human factor is a dangerous thing to meddle with...

Modern management theory is a ripe target for comedy, and Riens du tout is a delightful, if somewhat restrained, assault on that topic, earning young director Cédric Klapisch a César nomination for his first film.

Fabrice Luchini is the hot-wired executive who sees people-power as the way to reverse his company’s financial problems.  It is a role that mild-mannered yet surprisingly forceful Luchini carries off with great success.  His apparent lack of charisma reinforces the absurdity of his crusade, although it is his expression of guilt that lends the film its truly poignant ending.

Klapisch’s style of direction is fresh and imaginative, with some very unusual (even disturbing) camera shots of mundane events (such as that bizarre sequence in an elevator).  Less successful, though, is the characterisation.  There are just too many characters involved, so we hardly seem to get to know any of them, although the viewer can readily sympathise with their collective fate.  Perhaps this is an attempt to reflect how company executives view their staff – i.e. as a mass of nameless automata rather than individuals?

The film is a little unstructured and somewhat unevenly paced, but there are some very funny moments which more than compensate for that.  The theme of the film is one that will strike an immediate chord with anyone who has worked for a firm that has resorted to the cult of management consultancy to sort out its manpower problems.  The next one on the bungee rope could be you.

© James Travers 2000

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