François Ruffin’s film oscillates between embarrassment and consternation

LThe trailer already caused a slight unease. Watching the film (1h24) Get to work! confirmed us in this impression: his co-director, François Ruffin, loves people, we feel it, we know it, we see it, but his sense of marketing, worthy of a manager of Endemol, risks, by dint of play tricks on him. However, the initial intention is laudable: to highlight, on screen, the harshness of life for minimum wage workers. But Ruffin constantly has to put himself in the frame, and that’s where it becomes embarrassing and questions the intentions of the perhaps candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Especially since he is not alone !

The elected representative of the Somme features Sarah Saldmann, a lawyer-TV columnist. Abandoning her luxurious world for a while, between the Ritz and the Plaza-Athénée with its truffle croque-monsieur costing over 50 euros, she goes to meet a France that she doesn’t know. What to say about her? Is she like that in real life? We refuse to believe it. Is she this caricature of a hypermaterialist consumer, who displays her “wish list” above ground and who ignores the value of money, the cost of living and, moreover, allows herself to insult the unemployed? Clever, François Ruffin gave him the leading role. Yes, because she is the headliner, on which she also appears in the form of a… caricature, and not the little people, who sometimes look like extras…

“I said shit”

It all started with a debate on the RMC set where the young woman displayed her contempt for the “glandus” and the “lazy”. Present, the deputy then challenges him to live on a minimum wage for a month or two. Go for “a week,” the lawyer agrees. In the role of Cruella, she will be perfect.

So begins, not an immersive film about the difficulties of a job with poverty wages, but a reality film with shots, music and a story of a cultural shock accentuated by the precious manners of the woman in immersion. In front of a PMU bar, dazzled by the sight of this sign, she takes out her phone to immortalize the storefront. Further, she compares the Agricultural Show to a “fashion week”. For her, it’s about living the life of a delivery person, a home helper, a technician, a handler, a volunteer, a cleaning lady, a footballer, and to give up, for a time, the attributes of his social class which are his heels and his fur scarf. “I am for the social reintegration of the rich! » jokes Ruffin, to you and to you with the TV columnist.

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Answer

Obviously he has the right role. At the beginning, worse than a Macronist, Sarah Saldmann is distressing with social stupidity and prejudice. Ruffin, who overplays the common guy, intervenes to “re-educate” her, to show her the reality of this suffering France, from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Lyon, via Abbeville, Grigny and Bléré. The casting is perfect, representative of the country. Ruffin knows how to do it, including in his books. Little by little, faced with the trials and testimonies of these workers, the young woman loses her toughness, shows empathy, reconsiders her words (“I said shit”) and even lets out a few tears in front of the testimony from a home helper (1,000 euros per month) who explains that it is not the money that counts, but the smile on the faces of the people helped.

Climbing the steps

The only real interest in this reality film is in the emotion, the dignity and the words of these workers who we would have liked to occupy more space, more time. Some scenes are poignant, others provoke smiles, like those where footballers sing in chorus in the locker room or children dance for Halloween. The film ends with a false rise in the steps of all these workers, as if, aware of having done too much on Sarah Saldmann and him, Ruffin wanted to refocus the subject on them, the real actors in their lives. And if it wasn’t clear, he repeats it, he repeats it: “The subject is people, and not Sarah Saldmann!” ” Understood ?