Human Resources (2000)

Boring, long, and too preachy.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Human Resources" is a very French look at labor and management. What I mean is that it takes a decidedly more adversarial look at this relationship...something more common there than in the US or our films.Franck (Jalil Lespert) is going to be graduating soon from college. So, for his internship, he returns to the factory where his dad has long worked and Franck's job is in the front office...with management. He has arrived at an interesting time, as the relationship between the owners and the workers are deadlocked. The boss insists he's got the workers' best interests at heart and the communist labor leader simply wants nothing to do with him and her position is purely adversarial. Most viewers likely will assume this labor leader is an extremist...and it sure looks that way. Franck decides to try appealing directly to the workers...and he's wildly successful. What he doesn't know is that the boss really IS a duplicitous creep and he's using Franck. So what will Franck do when he learns the truth?This film is a tough sell for many viewers. A film about labor and management is NOT a sexy or exciting idea for most viewers. It also is very slow at times and features a direct-to-video look. Still, despite all this, it is a powerful and well acted film that gets you to think.

The first thing I have to say is that as a film it seems like a simple movie, without any aspiration. It is not good for planning, photography, or anything special. The only good thing is the actors that at least make it credible. To those interested in the explanation of the title in the spoiler.Spoiler: As a movie for people who do not even dedicate themselves to the movies or have to do it seems to me that it is a movie that can be seen. Although I do not agree with his message, I have to say that as a movie it is worth it.It seems to me a film for the last century because there are all the ingredients, the totalitarian trade unionist, the boss who goes in the back, the employees less subservient to Leninism and then the clerks, who all over the world branded entrepreneurs and are mere currants. The trick comes when the prepared person arrives and it is not based on nonsense if not in today's world, liberal and raises things to see if they work, although this proved the 35 hours failed in France for not being competitive, without bias ideological. I saw his point well until, as it has not led to an ideological point, nothing reasonable and totally sentimental. It is clear that today you have to update whether you or your father.By the way I am amazed at the lack of freedom that the film asks for and only one critic has commented, when you are forced to go on strike, why does not it look like the free choice to work or strike, does anyone oblige to strike? Nobody realizes that at the end of the film, if the second part were done, if the strike had lasted a long time, they would all be unemployed by bankruptcy and if it had not lasted, they would all be unemployed, because of bankruptcy and That the costs today are unbearable.What the driver of errands would say when I passed him, the same thing but it is called evolution and you have to assume it. I hope not to disturb anyone with what I say, but to see if we have already evolved

I thought this was played in a rather too pedestrian manner until near the end when the unspoken conflict between the father and the son exploded. In a sense this is a story more or less a century behind its time. We have the factory and the bosses, and we have the workers whose labor is exploited by those who own and control the capital. We have the union organizers who are little different from those who long ago sought a worker's paradise while employing communist tactics.But where this is different is that it depicts the conflict in a contemporary setting with the institution of the 35-hour week as the bone of contention. Jalil Lespert plays Franck, the son who is home for the summer from college in Paris to serve as a management trainee at the factory where his father (Jean-Claude Vallod) is employed. The father is a throwback to the loyal worker of the 19th century who was wedded to the machine, who adored the machine, someone who has completely accepted his status as worker/cog in the greater machine that is the factory. Even in his off hours he works cutting wood using a large buzz saw in his garage. But he wants something better for his son.The son is personable and talented. He puts together a questionnaire that allows management to see how its employees feel about the 35-hour week in order to better manipulate them. By accident he discovers that management is going to fire 12 workers, most of whom have spent their entire working lives for the company. This is the crisis point for the son.Without going into plot details, what we discover at the end is that the father despises himself because he is nothing more than a man who feeds a machine while the son reveals that he at some level hates his father because he is a factory worker, a man who had neither the ability nor the gumption to raise about his station in life and a man who is afraid to question management.Bottom line: slow and realist to the point of being mundane with professional, but uninspired direction by Laurent Cantet.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

"Ressources humaines" is a consideration of the tensions created between management and labor, as seen through the eyes of a business grad student serving as a temporary management trainee during his school break. A proposed 35-hour work week is used as a dramatic charge for investigating both sides of white/blue collar concerns in a factory setting. After a strike is called by the workers, who feel betrayed by management, while management feels betrayed by its trainee who publicly discloses a "secret memo" on the pending firing of several workers, the film ends before a resolution is reached.Actually, it's not necessary to reveal the resolution, for that's not what the film appears to be about. While both sides feel their respective issues deeply, and both have seemingly legitimate arguments, at least to themselves, we witness what may actually be an absurdist comedy:Is the creation of a world of limitation a state of awareness that may in itself be spurious? Is the belief in lack a subconsious denial of human potential? Is the reacting to injustice an indvertent bonding of the actor to his own nemisis? Indeed, are not management and labor in effect merely different sides of the same coin? From a distant perspective, after "Ressources humaines" has unfolded and its passion and emotion subsided, we observe a dented sponge returning to its original shape. Nothing has really progressed, only temporarily allowed its profile to give. Yes, there is nothing to do in Laurent Cantet's world but to silently laugh at his sharp depiction of errors. Jalil Lespert as the student, Frank, and Jean-Claude as Le pere give mesmerizing performances.