Laurent Cantet's HUMAN RESOURCES tells the deeply personal story of a father-son relationship that is tested when their opposing attitudes toward work and life collide head on. Frank (Jalil Lespert) is a business school student who has returned from France for a summer internship at a factory in his hometown. It just so happens that his father, Jean-Claude (Jean-Claude Vallod), is an employee of the factory, where he has worked for thirty years. At first, Frank's energy impresses the bosses and makes his father proud. He orchestrates a referendum with the hopes that this will ease some of the tensions between the factory executives and the union leader, Mrs. Arnoux (Danielle Melador). But when he discovers that the executives were using this information in order to bypass negotiations with the union, jeopardizing his father's job, Frank is left feeling stunned and betrayed. Upon seeing that his father is going to accept this news passively, he helps the union boycott, sparking a clash between father and son that threatens to ruin their relationship forever. Cantet's usage of non-professional actors gives HUMAN RESOURCES a documentary-like feel, adding poignancy to the film's universal story.
HUMAN RESOURCES, in which Franck (Jalil Lespert), a business school student in Paris, takes an internship at the factory where his father has worked for 30 years, only to find that the ensuing lay-offs and general downsizing--which cost his father his job--are deeply troubling. Father and son go head to head in Laurent Cantent's sturring story of business, family, and individual opinion.
The film was shot in Gaillon, a town in Normandy, over the course of six weeks in early 1999.
Jalil Lespert (Frank) is the only actor with prior film experience. The rest of the cast were discovered by director Laurent Cantet at various unemployment agencies.
A series of filmed improvisations by the actors resulted in the film's shooting script.
Stephen Holden of the New York Times named HUMAN RESOURCES one of the 10 best films of 2000.
DVD Features:
Keep Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Widescreen - 1.85
Audio:
(unspecified) - French
Subtitles - English
Sorry, this product does not have this type of information.
Review 1:
"...HUMAN RESOURCES offers a refreshingly unusual picture of France and of French cinema....HUMAN RESOURCES is generous, sensitive and innovative. It is a film in which in the widest possible sense, the personal is political..."
Source: Sight and Sound
p.50 12/01/2000
Review 2:
"...This completely engrossing film gets more involving as it goes on....[A] powerful drama..."
Source: Los Angeles Times
p.C10 09/15/2000
Review 3:
"...[A] skillfully controlled debut feature....A poignant study of inter-family relationships..." -- 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Total Film
p.97 10/01/2000
Review 4:
"...A compelling, cant-free drama about clashing class systems and challenged family relationships....Engrossing..." -- Rating: A-
Source: Entertainment Weekly
p.104 09/29/2000
Review 5:
"...Never loses its poignant human dimension. It is so beautifully acted that the cast, especially the nonprofessional actors playing the embattled factory workers, seems plucked from the streets of a provincial French town..."
Source: New York Times
p.E10 09/15/2000
Shopping Cart:
