“Another World”: Vincent Lindon captivating in the costume of a leader at the end of his tether

DR

CRITIQUE — A successful director in a globalized group, Philippe Lemesle no longer knows how to respond to the crazy injunctions of his management. Yesterday, we wanted him to be a leader, today we want him to be an executor. Philippe and his wife separate, a love sacrificed on the altar of work.  

Philippe Lemesle (Vincent Lindon) plays a manager who is drifting. Ordered to fire 58 people – while the multinational Elsonn on which he depends is making juicy profits – he looks for a way out to save his employees on an industrial site of 500 people.

The collateral damage is considerable. His wife (Sandrine Kiberlain, ex-partner in life until 2003) accuses him of living in hell, she begins divorce proceedings. The first sequence shows the couple with their lawyers, unable to negotiate the financial details of their separation. They still love each other.

We are immediately plunged into the intensity of a drama whose fatal outcome we can guess. There is the war between Russia and Ukraine and there is the economic war, a pernicious war that is not new, but still relevant.

Presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 (where it did not receive any awards), “Un autre monde” is the third film on the corporate world directed by Stéphane Brizé, faithful to his co-writer Olivier Gorce and his favorite actor Vincent Lindon, once again overwhelming in its authenticity.

We will not speak of a completed trilogy, because the director has not said his last word on the hardness of work, a theme that is not often covered in cinema. His inspiration, he says, comes from his encounters from film to film leading to new reflections, these reflections leading to a new subject.  

In “The Measure of a Man” (2015), an unemployed fifty-something accepts a job as a security guard in a supermarket and must monitor pickpockets and employees. Vincent Lindon then wins the César for best actor at the 41st ceremony after being nominated five times, without success. The world of cinema is also cruel…

In “At War” (2018), a union leader opposes the closure of a factory with 1,100 employees based in Agen. Politicians and the Élysée are powerless to save jobs in the face of an intransigent German leader who has shamelessly swallowed up French aid.

With “ Another World ”, the film presents itself less like a documentary than the two previous ones. But “real people from the company” have passed a casting and play a role. They work in a factory that makes spare parts for the household appliances sector. They really look the part and the realism of the scenes is striking. We find in particular Didier Bille, a former HR director who published “HR, the crushing machine” and gave birth to the #BalancetonDRH movement.  

A manager at the end of his rope

Vincent Lindon in the office of an industrial site in Elsonn

After playing the unemployed and the unionist, Vincent Lindon goes to the other side of the mirror. Stéphane Brizé shows us the director of a provincial factory at the end of his tether. He is no longer able to accept what is asked of him, when what is asked of him is unacceptable.

The camera zooms in on Philippe Lesmesle, this lonely man, consumed by anxiety. His mental health and physical balance are in danger.

A good little soldier of capitalism, he conscientiously ties his tie in the morning. In his office, he displays a false authority. He has already made social plans, he no longer believes in them. He is no longer the man who thought he would save 500 jobs by sacrificing 58 people.

The spring is broken, he chains together meetings with his managers and appointments at the Parisian headquarters of the French management. He swallows pill after pill, runs on a treadmill. In the evening, he is glued to his computer, a sandwich in his hand. Like a hunted animal, he seems to be suffocating, condemned to carry out orders.

“The multiplicity of axes in certain scenes translates the sensation of encirclement, of confinement of the character. Problems come from everywhere, he has no respite like a man at sea in a boat with holes in all sides, trying to stop the water from rushing in through all the cracks in the walls,” explains Vincent Brizé during an interview with the press.

A final burst of optimism

Philippe thinks he has found an alternative solution: eliminate the bonuses and bonuses of managers for France, to achieve the required savings and thus avoid layoffs.

The group's “French president” is played by journalist Marie Drucker, for the first time in a film. She is perfect as an icy leader who uses Newspeak to her five site directors, all on an ejection seat. She has the self-confidence of the camp of the victors of globalization. On the starting blocks, she aims for the European presidency… if her mission goes well. Forced to present the alternative project, she remains cautious and does not take responsibility for it.

In a videoconference, the American big boss first judges the proposal as creative, intelligent, then violently rejects it. He explains that shareholders expect managers above all to demonstrate their “ability to trim”. The horrible expression has been uttered! “Even I have a boss to whom I am responsible. That boss is Wall Street.” That says it all. It's the law of the market. A recurring theme in Brizé's work, this time with the spotlight on a senior executive who is the victim of an inhuman system dominated by the financial markets.

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A broken family life

For the occasion, Sandrine Kiberlain has abandoned her pretty blond curls floating on her shoulders. Small tight bun, she offers the unvarnished face of a wife devastated by suffering. At 50, Anne Lemesle, mother of two grown children, has sacrificed everything on the altar of her husband's career. She is frightened by her future as a single woman.

She arranges to meet her future ex-husband in a parking lot. We forget that Vincent and Sandrine are two great actors who shared a slice of life, so accurate and sensitive is their acting. They probably drew on the springs of their past intimacy to deliver such a performance.

With Stéphane Brézé, the sets are minimalist. All his attention is focused on the protagonists, their emotions. During the visit of the house by potential buyers, we do not see any room of the common living space. Nothing, absolutely nothing. The camera is focused on Philippe's face locked in a painful silence.

The son has gone crazy. He threatened a teacher with a compass. That was all that was missing! At the hospital, the young man played by Anthony Bajon seems to have taken on his father's obsessions. He is obsessed with numbers to calculate the journey time of his parents who came to him. Whose fault is it ?

A few days later, he announced that he had Mark Zuckerberg himselfon the phone who promised him a job at Facebook. By then, he has to pass his exams at a business school. He dreams of joining the world of high tech, of GAFAM. Another world, far from the old-fashioned and thankless “field” job of his father, who was responsible for an industrial site in the provinces.

Why is this film called “Another World”?? Is it nostalgia for a world before, where a certain form of paternalism in family businesses guaranteed job stability?? Philippe reconnects with his inner world and his own truth.? The future world fantasized by his son.? The new world supposed to come about following the Covid-19 crisis.? The director offered an initial answer in “Another World”? war ». It is up to each of us to bring our own interpretation to that moment, at the beginning of 2022.

Last sequence: Philippe, Anne and their son walk together in a field of flowers. It is the comfort of nature far from the brutal world of business. Nature, however, is faithful to the world of the living.

Camille Rocailleux accompanies the narration with string music and a lyrical voice that elevates the souls of the brave who are on the ground. The film ends with Anne Sylvestre's superb song “Les gens qui doutent”.

This fiction is nourished by about twenty testimonies from senior executives that Stéphane Brizé took the trouble to meet before filming. They worked in the mechanical industry, metallurgy, banking, advertising, insurance, cosmetics. The director relies on solid, realistic material, without artifice. This allows him to describe another form of proletariat, that which affects leaders who, at a certain point in their career, no longer play the game.

But will there still be candidates to take positions of responsibility in companies?? That's another story…

The “Jean Valjean” tax for the super rich

As we know, Vincent Lindon is a committed actor. All his choices in cinema are pretty solid. Each time, he defends a cause and gives us a sensitive, human interpretation that leads to reflection.  

In May 2020, in the midst of the health crisis, he published a column in Mediapart in which he criticized government choices: the lockdown deemed a medieval practice, the hospital crisis, the five-euro reduction in APL, the sale of large companies like Alstom…  

In exceptional times, exceptional contributions. Vincent Lindon proposed a contribution called “Jean Valjean” in homage to Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables who worked in his time to help the poorest. This exceptional contribution would be financed by French estates holding more than 10 million euros, through a progressive tax of 1 to 5%, with a deductible for the first 10 million euros.

According to the economists that the actor took the trouble to consult, this contribution would represent 36 to 37 billion euros that would be distributed to the approximately 21.4 million households too poor to be subject to income tax.

“We build our lives on what we give,” notes Vincent Lindon in an interview to promote the film. “Having a bigger car, a bigger house, it doesn't do much good. To have a little more, we do a lot of harm to a lot, a lot… »

Un autre monde, a film by Stéphane Brizé, 1h47, in theaters since February 16, 2022

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