It’s the story of a guy who sets the societal tone. François Ruffin is currently hosting screenings of his fourth documentary film “ Au boulot ! », shot with his accomplice Gilles Perret, a cinematographic fraternity pursued since “ Merci patron ! » (on Benard Arnault), « Stand up women » (on social connection professions), and « J‘want the sun » (on the yellow vests).
The deputy for the Somme returns to the reporter’s clothing, and for the occasion escapes the political maelstrom which left him largely exhausted during his break with Mélenchon and his clergy, thanks to a settling of scores from the ” vieux » with “ frondeurs » which, however, will have long served as soup bowls for him.
Treated as disloyal pests after having dared to demand a dose of internal democracy within the rebellious conclave, they were excommunicated at the moment when the left attempted a unitary initiative, thanks to Macron dissolving his relative majority in the National Assembly.
On the way to the cross, Ruffin is then whistled at the 2024 Humanity Day, and portrayed by his ex-colleagues in “Ghost of Doriot”named after the communist leader who took a liking to Nazism, and became a fierce collaborator.
Insubordinate to nuance, but not to ridicule, Mélenchon’s boy scouts nevertheless continue to bite through hateful remarks and attacks ad personam through social networks or Youtube. Leading the deputy, narrowly re-elected in the Somme, (and since adopted by the environmentalist parliamentary group) to a certain political retreat of circumstance (he has barely intervened in the Assembly since his re-election), like a disoriented orphan, after consummating her break with the rebellious leader.
His new documentary allows him at the very least to bounce back and reconnect with the practice of popular immersion (otherwise populiste, a term he claims), gently cheeky, which characterized his trademark from the time of the France Inter show “ There if I am there » produced by Daniel Mermet, his radio mentor.
The plot of the film, its common thread, or its gimmick, depending on whether one appreciates Ruffin and Perret’s idea more or less, consists of dipping a representative of the Parisian upper middle class, who usually lives in the icy waters of calculation. egoist from the west of Paris, in the deep end of social reality.
Sarah Saldmann, socialite lawyer and daddy’s girl, appears in front of the screen wearing stiletto heels, in the company of her dog ” Triomphe “. We will discover later that she only sees herself as a modest representative of the ” middle class “, because, she will argue: “ I fly and I don’t have a jet “. Irrefutable.
And when she talks about the employees who work to make themselves sick at the microphone of “ big mouths » on RMC, where she has her napkin ring, just like on the set of Hanouna, she insults them because they “ get sick for nothing, these lazy people ».
Absence of scruple, of the slightest atom of compassion, bourgeois social violence seems to be reduced to a chemically pure caricature.
Ruffin recently claimed on France Inter the caricature principle, in which he wants to combine emotion and joy: “ This film is a political object, but it is first and foremost an object of fantasy ».
The problem is that a political fantasy does not really pride itself on reporting reality. Thus, the representativeness of the beaded parigote that he places in situations which go beyond it, is of no great interest, other than overplaying a ” social revenge » artificial, and illustrate the fundamental immaturity of the character, by guessing her shamefully shedding tears of compassion outside the field of the camera, faced with the testimony of a care assistant evoking her (difficult) job as “ the most beautiful job in the world ».
In fact, the caricature of a ridiculous and painted bourgeoisie (she required a makeup budget!), makes the function of social foil to which Ruffin and Perret are assigned shapeless or inconsistent.
In order to overcome this state of affairs, Ruffin alleges on France Inter that the prejudices and accusations with which she is accustomed (lazy employees, assisted unemployed, etc.) are prevalent in many social strata, starting with the working classes, those who suffer so much from and at work. And he’s not wrong.
Especially since popular resentment transformed into morbid phantasmagoria (the poor and foreigners “to whom everything is given”) abounds at best in the far-right vote.
That said, the interest of the film, apart from the fact of organizing a formalized or dramatized meeting, in short fictitious, between two social classes which do not ordinarily confront each other, is at least to embody wage labor in its most common form. more edifying. That is to say the most clinically fair from the point of view of representation, even though it is paradoxically only represented politically by individuals foreign to the wage labor of declining industries, and especially of the service and link economy. (dynamic but very precarious economy), with a few exceptions.
However, the character of Saldmann, in all his political ignorance and his stupidity, which is essentially based on self-centered beliefs, such as so many bourgeois people, small and large, are nothing other than a carnival performance that would be taken seriously, embarked on a week-long road trip without consequences among the proles, something that Ruffin himself fears in the film, sensing the risk of ” tourisme social » to which he subjects his cardboard creature.
But as frail as it is, the creature ends up escaping from him, without the spectator understanding exactly why. Saldmann simply disappears from the screen when Ruffin prepares a ceremonial-style staging of the Cannes marches, to pay homage to the personalities presented in the film.
We will later learn that the conflict in the Middle East is the cause. Saldmann considering that Israel’s response to Gaza and Lebanon is precisely proportionate…
As a good Samaritan, convinced that we can raise awareness of the problem, if not amending it, Ruffin regularly proceeds from this desire to generate empathy, through documentary and empirical knowledge, among those who do not have have only exclusionary and hateful social logorrhea on their lips.
Since the only one having agreed to suspend her value judgment, as a candidate for this “ live my life » documentary, is Sarah Saldmann, the feeling of the viewer joins the discomfort felt in front of a reality TV show with sauce Endemol : everything rings falsely true or really false. Even though the intentions are good, the testimonies are moving, and Ruffin sincerely loves the people whose dignity and need for recognition he relates, making work the barycenter of his political credo.
But isn’t the main problem that Ruffin isn’t really the people’s guy, if he ever was? By retracing (sincerely) the daily life and the condition of mistreated and forgotten employees, he simultaneously places himself in a one-person political trajectory (just as he almost never escapes the field of the camera), at the risk of confusing his message, he who has clearly just positioned himself for the 2027 presidential election.
At the end of her proletarian immersion of a few days, Sarah Saldmann confesses to having “ says shit “. And you, comrade Ruffin, would you not be on the verge of doing so, by serving the deadly principle of republican monarch, were it enlightened?
