Violence des échanges en milieu tempéré (2003) - film review

A young business graduate, Philippe Seigner, can hardly believe his good fortune when he lands a job with an exclusive firm of management consultants, based in Paris.  On his way to work, he meets and befriends an attractive young woman, Eva.  Whilst Philippe is set for a high-flying executive career, Eva is a modest receptionist and a single mother – but the two soon realise they are in love.  Philippe’s first assignment is to conduct an audit of a factory, not realising that it is soon to be bought up by a larger company, resulting in up to a hundred redundancies.  When he learns the truth, Philippe is disgusted and feels unable to complete his mission.  However, to Eva’s horror, his yearning for a successful career ultimately triumphs over his idealist principles…

This effective piece of social drama from director Jean-Marc Moutout paints a chilling yet thoroughly accurate picture of the business world and its corrupting influence on apparently decent people.  Whatever social responsibilities employers may have had in the past are constantly eroded in the pursuit of profits by Big Business, aided and abetted by an over-zealous army of management consultants.  The film is cold and detached for the most part, but it tells its story with great power and humanity – both the wider social context and also its narrower scope, the portrayal of an individual who realises he is effectively a “livelihood butcher” who ends up jettisoning his ideals to survive.  There are some obvious parallels with the corrupting influence of fascism, particularly in the sequences near the end of the film where the management consultants attend a party and end up chanting the mantra “Work Hard, Play Hard”, in a way that is disturbingly reminiscent of the Nuremburg Rally.  Moutout’s restrained direction and an exceptional performance from Jérémie Rénier make this one of the most thought-provoking French language films of recent years.

© James Travers 2005

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