Frankie Wallach, accompanied by Bernard Campan and Clémentine Célarié, plays a garbage collector in the city of Paris in this sensitive TV film which raises the alarm about the precariousness of single mothers in the context of a continuous evening.
Ambre, 22 years old, a little boy she had “at the age when we believe that having children only happens to other people“, lives with her parents, who are of modest means. When she fails her second year of law school and decides to stop her studies against her family’s wishes, it’s a break-up.
Here she is, alone, ready to fight to avoid ending up on the street or, above all, losing custody of her son. Faced with the difficulty of finding a job, she tries her luck in the competition and becomes a garbage collector for the city of Paris. Hired by a manager advocating positive discrimination (Clémentine Célarié, with her great energy), Ambre is quickly confronted with the ordinary sexism of her team leader (Bernard Campan) who enjoys provoking her – “here no one has periods, mood swings are not tolerated“… -, and the taboo surrounding his new job.
“The GIGN of cleanliness”
” The script scared me at firstwillingly confides his interpreter Frankie Wallach (seen in The Book of Solutions by Michel Gondry, the young woman is the director and performer of the formidable Too much love , an autofiction dedicated to his grandmother, a survivor of the death camps). I found that the character was faced with too many obstacles. The mother dispossesses Ambre of her role as mother, she literally takes the child from her arms. Ambre does not have her place as a mother in the family. Then having her parents and the social worker on her back, finding herself in the difficult world of garbage collectors… But thanks to the direction and the other actors, a humanity emerges from all of this. Even if we adopt Ambre’s point of view, we also understand very well that of the other protagonists. »
© Nathalie Guyon – FTV /
A classic but always effective narrative spring, we discover, in the footsteps of the neophyte, a little-known universe: the cleaning services of the capital, their training center, with the learning of the recommended postures for lifting heavy things; their emergency situation unit, “the functional” or “the GIGN of cleanliness“, jokes a colleague, the one who intervenes after the accident of a rendering truck, overflows of post-fiesta vomit, a sporting event, demonstrations… But also much more serious accidents, like suicides or attacks. ” Functional is hard work, which requires physical but also emotional condition, insists the actress. How do you recover from having a newborn thrown out of a window? Fortunately, there is solidarity, it’s a bit like the spirit of a football team.»
Two prizes in La Rochelle
This sensitive TV film about the world of the invisible directed by Akim Isker (Nobody’s child ), with a societal dimension that is – a little too much – edifying, received the prize for best unitary at the La Rochelle festival, mid-September, by the jury chaired by Thierry Godard, but also the Unifrance foreign press prize. I want to highlight Ambre’s resilience,concludes Frankie Wallach.She does not sink into miserabilism, victimization. I would not want the moral of the story to be that we learn through obstacles. The spectators of the festival fortunately retained her strength of life, her joy, she does not let herself be overwhelmed by her fate. She does not let herself be beaten down, she constantly continues to move forward. » A brave little soldier who is just trying to become an adult, Ambre will indeed end up finding her way and her pride. The fiction will be followed by a debate “Single mothers, the trap of precariousness”.
