Get to work! *
by Gilles Perret and François Ruffin
French film, 1h24
Get to work! is a social film. Nothing surprising. Its authors, director Gilles Perret and MP François Ruffin, have already signed together I want the sun!a journey in the footsteps of the yellow vests, and Get up, women!an ode to workers in the connection professions. Its title is enough to evoke a dive into the world of work and its ironic subtitle, Can we reintegrate the rich?lets the political message shine through. As he had undertaken in Thanks boss! on the relations between bosses and workers, released in 2016 and awarded a César, François Ruffin chooses the register of the confrontation between two universes to shed light on “those who hold the country up”.
A lawyer and columnist on 24-hour news channels, including CNews, Sarah Saldmann, with very strong ideas on “this country of welfare recipients”will offer him the idea of a trick. During an exchange on the show “Grandes Gueules” on RMC, the deputy for Somme suggested that the thirty-year-old lawyer try to “live for three months on the minimum wage”. She accepts this experience of social inversion. Already experienced in reality TV shows, such as “Vive ma vie” in the 2000s, the synopsis is caricatured, sometimes disturbing and demagogic.
France of “towers” and “towns”
Sarah Saldmann leaves “unknown land” with Amine, delivery driver in Lyon, or Ked and Jessie, workers in a family business that packages smoked fish in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Difficult, in heels, to keep up with parcel deliveries. Difficult, without know-how, to lift fillets and pack them, standing up, all day. The road movie continues with young temporary workers from the Grigny neighborhoods and in the mud of a Morvan farm. A France of “towers” and “towns” that the deputy for the Somme, who broke with La France insoumise, wants to reconcile.
Some situations are amusing, many others moving because the encounter is possible and above all because the faces and stories of a life of precariousness are moving. The energy of Louisa, a carer in Saint-Étienne, who claims to practice the profession “the most beautiful in the world”despite the wear and tear of the body. The serenity of Sylvain, a carpenter injured at work and a volunteer at Secours populaire in Abbeville. The resilience of Nathalie, a maid who reveals “years of frustration” and comes back to life after finding a job in Bléré, a « zero long-term unemployed territory ».
A deep “moral and electoral” disagreement with Jean-Luc Mélenchon
In a restaurant in Amiens which employs Afghan refugees, François Ruffin enjoys having “always dreamed of (with) to be served by the big bourgeoisie”. “It is you who are in judgment and contempt”retorts Sarah Saldmann, who sees herself as “a poor woman among the rich”.
In contrast, she is sincerely involved, listens and seems moved by the realities, once stepping aside to hide her tears. She even recognizes her lack of nuance. “Sarah Saldmann, has she really changed?” We don’t care. That’s not the subject. The subject is people”decides the MP, while the lawyer disappears from the end of the film, except for extracts of her comments made on CNews on Israel’s response to Gaza.
With the promotional tour of this “documentary comedy”François Ruffin, now registered with the environmentalist group, remembers the left fondly. Re-elected in the legislative elections, after a delay of 7 points against the RN candidate, he tries to slip between the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with whom he made a “profound moral and electoral disagreement”and French social democracy in reconstruction. According to an Ifop poll published on November 4, more than three out of five left-wing supporters and/or voters consider that it “embodies the left well”just ahead of Raphaël Glucksmann. It remains to build an offer to convince all French people.
