Two years ago, Louis-Julien Petit unexpectedly burst onto the cinematic scene with a socially resonant feel-good movie, Discount, which made no secret of its empathy for today's damned of the earth, those supermarket cashiers who earn peanuts despite a job as repetitive as it is frustrating. Carole Matthieu allows him to hammer home the social upheavals caused by an increasingly financial conception of the economy. The filmmaker has delighted us by asking Corinne Masiero, leader of the Discount revolt, to transform herself into a personnel manager. The transformation is highly credible. But the title role falls to Isabelle Adjani, who plays a labor inspector torn between her immediate empathy for all those destroyed by corporate life and the need to keep the company afloat. It's an understatement to say that the character suffers, which is hardly surprising given Adjani's habit of slipping into the shoes of those who have it rough. But the expected figures of speech are more than compensated for by the actress's obvious sincerity. Carole Matthieu is a dark, very dark film, almost the opposite of Discount, were it not for Petit's vision of the world. As it stands, it makes us want to follow the filmmaker who, we have no doubt, has not finished intriguing us. Special feature: the film is being released in cinemas even though it has already been shown on the small screen and the DVD is in the shops!
Yves ALION
French film by Louis-Julien PETIT (2016), with Isabelle ADJANI, Corinne MASIERO, Lyes SALEM. 1h 25.
