Product Details

• Actors: Jalil Lespert, Jean-Claude Vallod, Chantel Barre
• Directors: Laurent Cantet
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: KINO VIDEO
• DVD Release Date: April 22, 2008
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00151QYYO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,986 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

For all those moviegoers panting for more films about restrictive working practices in the new European economy, this début feature from the young French director Laurent Cantet is a must. Jalil Lespert plays Franck, an ambitious young student who comes home from Paris to spend time at the local steel-pressing plant. His father (Jean-Claude Vallot), who looks like a cowardly walrus, has worked on the factory floor for decades. His bright, inexperienced son goes straight into the personnel department, where the issue is one of restructuring the labor force. We all know what that means. The clash between innocence and experience can be seen coming a mile off, but that doesn't diminish the patient, doomy force of the plot, or Cantet's skill in digging drama out of such intractable material. The inevitable showdown between father and son is like a blow to the heart, and the movie ends in a sort of bewildered daze. Apart from Lespert, none of the performers are professionals; they are proper workers, and it shows. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Product Description

Franck, a Parisian business school student, takes an internship in the Human Resources department at the factory where his father has labored for
the past 30 years. When Franck's efforts to better the company lead to the firing of many employees, including his father, a furious confrontation
ensues, forcing father and son to ponder their relationship while dealing with their individual lives.

Winner of over 17 International Awards, including the Jury Prize, Seattle International Film Festival
Best New Director: San Sebastian International Film Festival

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Raw, Strong, Personal, Socioeconomic Cinematic Experience..., November 23, 2004

By 

Kim Anehall "www.cinematica.org" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Human Resources (DVD)

The film Human Resources illustrates the dilemma of when class differences clash as a young man from a lower class tries to rise to a higher class. The young man, Franck (Jalil Lespert), returns to his hometown to begin an internship for human resources at a local factory. Franck's father, a machinist, who is close to retirement, works for the same company that he is doing his internship for. Franck's childhood friends also work for the same company, and now Franck has to assume the role as a leader over the people of his past. The status change that Franck has acquired through higher academic achievement does not come with as smooth of a transition, as he expected, as it becomes a rough journey into personal socioeconomic choices.

Franck's intentions are honorable as he attempts to balance the internship at a managerial position in the human resource department with his parents and friends' social standing. But as expected a life of profiteering collides with the socially learned values that Franck has acquired from a young age as he sees the injustices committed by the company for which he is interning. Franck faces a decision of what is right and wrong, but also a decision that could destroy a potential successful future.

Laurent Cantet's vision depicts the social inequality between the rich and poor in a modern society thought the business student Franck and his choices. Cantet also displays the daily hard work of the blue-collar population, as their daily endeavors are frequently directed by the white-collar sector. Through the careful direction of Cantet the audience gets to experience a political cinematic experience, which offers much food for thought. The cinematography enhances the experience through the documentary-like style of the film as it creates an authentic atmosphere. This authentic atmosphere makes the story so much more personal to the audience, which in the end leaves the audience pondering social difference.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Taut Working Class Drama, September 24, 2004

By 

Black Peter (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Human Resources (DVD)

This is a surprisingly strong film about labor and family relations in small French suburb. This earlier feature by one of France's rising stars of Cinema (see his exceptional TIME OUT) is heart breaking in it's depection of factory life and the mutability of family ties. With excellent real life performances the films near documentary style only adds to it's power.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Management vs. labor in a contemporary French setting, January 14, 2007

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Human Resources (DVD)

I thought this was played in a rather too pedestrian manner until near the end when the unspoken conflict between the father and the son exploded. In a sense this is a story more or less a century behind its time. We have the factory and the bosses, and we have the workers whose labor is exploited by those who own and control the capital. We have the union organizers who are little different from those who long ago sought a worker's paradise while employing communist tactics.

But where this is different is that it depicts the conflict in a contemporary setting with the institution of the 35-hour week as the bone of contention. Jalil Lespert plays Franck, the son who is home for the summer from college in Paris to serve as a management trainee at the factory where his father (Jean-Claude Vallod) is employed. The father is a throwback to the loyal worker of the 19th century who was wedded to the machine, who adored the machine, someone who has completely accepted his status as worker/cog in the greater machine that is the factory. Even in his off hours he works cutting wood using a large buzz saw in his garage. But he wants something better for his son.

The son is personable and talented. He puts together a questionnaire that allows management to see how its employees feel about the 35-hour week in order to better manipulate them. By accident he discovers that management is going to fire 12 workers, most of whom have spent their entire working lives for the company. This is the crisis point for the son.

Without going into plot details, what we discover at the end is that the father despises himself because he is nothing more than a man who feeds a machine while the son reveals that he at some level hates his father because he is a factory worker, a man who had neither the ability nor the gumption to raise about his station in life and a man who is afraid to question management.

Bottom line: slow and realistic to the point of being mundane with professional, but uninspired direction by Laurent Cantet.