If, like me, you didn't know who Sarah Saldmann was before seeing the new film by Gilles Perret and François Ruffin, you will quickly get to know her. A brief sequence is enough to discover, astounded, the existence of this lawyer with preppy phrasing who does not hesitate to affirm that the unemployed are welfare recipients and profiteers. In fiction, the character would seem far too cliché to convince. But this person is real: from “Grandes Gueules” to “Touche pas à mon poste”, she multiplies ultra-reactionary speeches in several sadly popular shows.
Invited by François Ruffin, exasperated by his words, to come and live for a while in the shoes of a person living on minimum wage, the columnist agrees to try the experience for a few days. The challenge is biased in advance: it will in fact involve introducing her to a certain number of professional activities practiced by those at the bottom of the salary scale – and from which she believes they could earn much more provided you show more ambition and less laziness.
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However, living on the minimum wage is not (only) that: it is also worrying at every moment about not being able to end the month other than in the red, caught in the throat by incompressible bills that cannot be reduced. then leave only crumbs. It means having to give up most of the leisure activities you dream of, putting aside most of your projects, dressing usefully instead of dressing pretty, giving up health expenses that would make you feel better, etc. In short, it has little to do with a simple immersion course in a fishmonger or with a care assistant, which we would carry out like a role play before returning to our luxurious home.
I will go to work for you
But we have to start with something: like Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who went to dinner with the French to better confront their reality, or like these business leaders who participated in the show “Patron incognito », Sarah Saldmann agrees to dive into the “France from below” to see what it does. The result is reminiscent of the first films of Étienne Chatiliez: the collision between two universes not made to meet is as violent as it is caustic.
It begins in a luxury hotel, when François Ruffin is waiting for Sarah Saldmann, both excited and a little worried about what will come next. It was he who had the idea for this film and, if you listen closely, it seems that Gilles Perret, with whom he already co-directed I want the sun et Get up, women!be less enthusiastic than him. “I was convinced that the cinematographic process was good, Gilles Perret tells us. The confrontation of opposites inevitably gives rise to laughter, emotion, anger. All the ingredients we like to put in our films! On the other hand, I thought I was incapable of supporting Sarah Saldmann during filming.”
Get to work! quickly creates a strange impression, like what Gilles Perret points out, “We must recognize that Sarah Saldmann played the game. Let’s at least give her that credit.” Indeed, we are torn between dismay at this bourgeois woman who delivers packages in stilettos and a certain form of gratitude towards her for having accepted this experience. Quickly, we even come to hope that this immersion course could change it profoundly, before being overtaken by our own naivety.
Coming down to earth
The film allows us to wonder if placing individuals above ground in the face of the reality of the majority of French people could be enough to bring them down once and for all from their ivory tower full of false ideas and class contempt. When Sarah Saldmann sincerely bursts into tears after meeting Louisa, a care worker who works for little things but above all to feel useful, we almost start to believe it. “She moved a little but she quickly returned to her world, summarizes Gilles Perret. It is true that today she no longer ventures into social territory during her appearances on screen…”
On this level, Get to work! quickly reaches the limits of its device, which the two directors are perfectly aware of. “We are not going to pick up the bourgeoisie one by one to bring them back to earth”notes Gilles Perret, realistic. It is therefore not a question of proposing that all those who spit on the “France of the assisted” also come and do their little internship. “To create more equality and solidarity between people, there is a wonderful tool: taxes. And to impose the tax, you need a favorable balance of political power. That said, we are both optimists and, as far as Sarah Saldmann is concerned, we believed in it for a while…”
For reasons that we will leave to the spectators to discover, the adventure will end up turning into a mess. The opportunity for Gilles Perret and François Ruffin to definitively focus their camera on those whom they affirm are the real heroes of their film: the people they forced to welcome Sarah Saldmann alongside them, these people who are fighting on a daily basis to achieve a decent living and firmly believe in the notion of solidarity. At the end of the race, the two directors will literally roll out the red carpet for them during a sequence during which the precarious will be treated like stars.
The Perret-Ruffin duo's business may seem Manichean, but in a world where Sarah Saldmann (truffle croque-monsieur and clothes costing several thousand euros) and Haroun, Nathalie, Sylvain, of the Amine, whose daily life is made up of precariousness, it seems impossible to blame them for taking a somewhat binary look at our world. Politically, this confrontation is going nowhere, but at least it will have made it possible to shed light on the trajectories of some of these workers with an uneven path. And it will have given us the opportunity to hate even more this big bourgeoisie who lives in their world hating everything below them and obviously refusing to share their loot.
