In this thriller, the only crime is a working mother’s work week
Built for nerve-wracking speed, the French import “Full Time” is scored musically like a Luc Besson thriller from the mid-’80s, jacking up the tension with synthesizer beats suggesting the heroine is headed for a run-in with hordes of assassins.
But no. The enemy in this ground-level, working-class thriller is time, with an assist from relentless labor practices; a crippling series of Parisian strikes messing up everyone’s commutes; and the challenges of child care for working parents trying to hang onto their job as well as their sanity. If you thought Season 1 of “The Bear” was tense, “Full Time” makes “The Bear” look like “March of the Penguins.”
Writer-director Eric Gravel’s week-in-the-life exercise in suspense begins with darkness and the sound of a woman, breathing, as if she’d just run a marathon. In truth she’s asleep, about to be awakened by her cellphone alarm, for another day of just-in-time management.
Julie is head chambermaid at a five-star hotel in Paris. She and her two children live in a village some distance outside the city center; for this single parent, it’s a tight commute even in favorable circumstances, and in “Full Time,” even with its moments of humane sympathy, favorable circumstances are hard to come by.
Labor strikes have hobbled the transit system. As Julie – played by the marvelous Laure Calamy of “Call My Agent” – drops her kids at the home of their aging, increasingly exasperated nanny, it’s as dark outside as it is when her day is through.
At the hotel Julie oversees a whirl of controlled chaos in a caste system determined by the demands of Platinum-level guests. She trains dubious new hires when she isn’t power-washing one room’s bathroom walls after an (offscreen) incident of feces-smearing. Meantime she’s angling on the sly for a job interview elsewhere.
Julie has market-research experience in her past, and a corporate job prospect in her near-future, but the world conspires against her every tightly packed minute. As she changes the sheets in posh suites named after pillars of democracy – the Jefferson suite, the Roosevelt suite – “Full Time” revels in the hurtling pace and crisply edited momentum of a life that could use a little more freedom, and fairness, and a little less velocity.
Comparisons have been made to the films of the Dardennes brothers, which seem a little off to me. While their stories of ordinary women and men living, precariously, have an assured way of working up a sweat on any viewer’s brow, the Dardennes steer clear of atmospheric flourishes most films, this one included, take for granted. “Full Time” is closer in rhythmic spirit to the hit German film “Run Lola Run” from a generation ago, though without its overt crime elements.
The story resolution feels a lot less truer than what comes before it. I suppose it’s necessary for a movie like “Full Time” to land its protagonist on a soft bed of redemption and relief after such a rough ride. But in movies as far-flung as “Full Time” and the Andrea Riseborough vehicle “To Leslie,” the narrative convenience limits the narrative effectiveness.
In this case, though, only a bit. This is strong and highly economical storytelling, clocking in at under 90 minutes. Calamy is terrific, creating a whole character out of beautifully observed behavior. This is a process movie, driven by a firstrate actor deal with every kind of phone call. When she’s not avoiding her mortgage-seeking banker, Julie’s trying to get her ex-husband to cough up overdue alimony. She’s a one-woman coping mechanism, squaring up against a universe of microaggressions. (Her coveted job interview is a brief staredown with the most combative interviewer in France.) The film is a master class in reactivity, and Calamy manages it with perfect dramatic pitch.