Un Autre Monde

After two collaborations between the great French actor Vincent Lindon and director Stephen Brizé, wherein the former played working-class men fighting for their livelihoods—and indeed their lives—in a global capitalist system, the duo looks at heartless capitalism from the white-collar side of things, but the conclusion remains the same: in a system where everything takes second place to profit, the human wreckage touches all but the wealthiest of shareholders. Lindon is the well-intentioned and well-off Philippe, a factory manager heading for a divorce (Sandrine Kiberlain plays his wife) and trying to juggle the increasingly impossible demands of head office. Things come to a crunch when he is told to lay off 10% of his staff… ‘Brizé’s reputation as France’s own answer to Ken Loach remains intact… In “Another World” [the English title], Lindon slips most persuasively into the skin of the middle class, inevitably cushioned from capitalist cruelty no matter how sincere their sympathies for those below them. His very posture and body language evoke the uncertainty of a man with no clear corner to fight… Brizé and Olivier Gorce’s thorny script offers [Philippe] the possibility of redemption… [but] in this hard, unblinking film, even a moral victory feels like defeat.’—Guy Lodge, Variety