french films > Burnt Out - Sauf le respect que je vous dois

Burnt Out - Sauf le respect que je vous dois

Burnt Out - Sauf le respect que je vous dois

cast: Olivier Gourmet, Julie Depardieu, Dominique Blanc

year: 2005

colour: yes

certificate:

director: Fabienne Godet

runtime: 0

The discontents of the workplace have increasingly become a key theme of French cinema of the last few years, notably in Laurent Cantet's films and in Philippe Harel's 1999 adaptation of Michel Houellebecq's 'Whatever'. In Fabienne Godet's hard-edged feature, workplace blues meet film noir, in a story of one man who, as the saying goes, could take it no more. François (Gourmet) is a white-collar worker keeping his head above water in a business run by an autocratic, blithely exploitative boss. When a young colleague is pushed over the edge, a furious François tries to protest - and ends up on the run, his only hope a journalist (Depardieu) doing her best to make the true facts known. A portrait of a middle-aged, middle class man thrown into a nocturnal world of flight and fear, Godet's film has something in common with Cedric Kahn's Red Lights, but without the black farce. This is more a study of every social oppression and the stresses of corporate culture, as well as an extremely compelling realist thriller. It's also an opportunity to see the most watchable man in French (and Belgian) cinema, the almost ubiquitous Olivier Gourmet, at the top of his game.

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