THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
François Ruffin, who has political activities that are supposed to be involved, nevertheless allows himself the luxury of adding cinema, even if it is political, to his schedule. The ex-LFI deputy for Somme has signed four feature-length documentaries since 2016. Thanks boss! (2016), the first of them, caused a sensation. Ruffin portrays a Robin Hood flying to the aid of a worker laid off by LVMH, in a setting that combines a spy novel and a popular comedy. The result was legitimate success, 500,000 spectators and a César for best documentary.
His following films will be co-signed with Gilles Perret, a Savoyard and proud of it, but author of a work which marks a commitment symmetrical to that of the latter. I want the sun! (2019), trip in Berlingo in the footsteps of the “yellow vests”, and Get up, women! (2021), chronicle of a parliamentary investigation, carried out jointly with the Macronist deputy Bruno Bonnell, on the link professions, notwithstanding their interest, mark a clear drop in attendance.
Clash culture
It was because they lacked, no doubt, this crisp and semi-fictional dimension of the struggle with a “supervillain”that the symbolic mano a mano with Bernard Arnault, the first French fortune, conferred on Thanks boss! Here it is renewed, on a different scale, with Sarah Saldmann, a 33-year-old lawyer and audiovisual columnist, who has neither the capital scale nor the shadow power of Mr. Arnault, but was created on the sets the most conservatives of the audiovisual landscape a preppy Cruella persona of the class struggle. Highly displaying the arrogance of his condition, the disdain for the weak, the culture of clash.
After meeting her in the “Grandes Gueules” studio, on RMC, François Ruffin, who also does not disdain the art of provocation or that of rhetoric, offered to shoot a film with her. As he opens up in the prologue, while he joins the lawyer for lunch at the Plaza Athénée, it is a question of challenging her to live twenty-four hours the life of the minimum wage earners that she mocks at length of time. Against all expectations, the person concerned accepts.
Let us admit, from the announcement of this program and although aware of the irony of it, the doubt inspired by the project, which one would think borrowed from a reality TV show. What can we expect from such a challenge, which is not a concession to the spectacular distortion of reality? Stirring up passions with an expected fistfight? Prove that Sarah Saldmann has a heart like everyone else? Amused by the fact that she can clean a toilet bowl? Exclude her from the film when she doesn’t comply?
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