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(FULL TIME
Fri 26 May - Thu 1 Jun
Cine Lumiere
11:00 · 20:35
17 Queensberry Pl, South Kensington, London SW7 2DW, United Kingdom)
"Full Time"
Julie (Laure Calamy) goes to great lengths to raise her two children in the countryside while keeping her job in a Parisian luxury hotel. When she finally gets a job interview for a position she had long been hoping for, a national strike breaks out, paralyzing the public transport system. The fragile balance that Julie has established is jeopardized. Julie then sets off on a frantic race against time, at the risk of faltering.
"Full Time" begins with a noise, the leading character Julie’s breathing, as she sleeps. The idea is to reveal the character gradually, from an intimate perspective, in a macroscopic, sensory manner, with this deep breathing that enwraps us, letting us know that we will be right by her side the entire film. Extremely close to her breathing, to the very grain of her skin. Also, it's a moment of calm before the storm. The film is like a long forward thrust and the first scene precedes the constant motion that ensues. We’re pretty much in the only point in time when Julie is at rest, in that single and transient moment when she can recharge her batteries. Afterwards, there will no longer be any respite for her. Through the lens of this woman, alone with her children, it's about the rhythm of our lives and our daily struggles. Just like Julie, we want to speak about the people we see on the train every day who gamble on living far from the capital to have a better quality of life. It’s a difficult balance to strike and not everyone manages to find the way to make it work.
It's difficult to keep the character’s bright composure in spite of the spell she is going through. The fact is that we know very little about this woman’s life, except that she's in the moment, yet relentlessly thinking of how to make things work from one day to the next. This woman is going through a rather chaotic chapter in her life, that Americans would sum up in the expression the perfect storm, meaning when you run into every possible and conceivable problem at once and you've to find ways to solve everything. It's a sensory film. Through the creation of a musical backdrop echoing Julie’s stressful daily life. The electro soundtrack reflects the character’s inner throbbing, the tempo and the repetitiveness of her own life. It’s like her inner music, a succession of waves transporting us into her experience. This way, everything that surrounded her became off screen sensory matter. It's a simple means to add density to the city, and make Paris more anxiety-inducing. For this is how Julie feels about being in town, instantly receiving its full- blown violence every time she steps off the train. This also explains why she wishes for another life for her children. She wants to maintain, regardless of the cost for her, her safe harbor in a more peaceful territory where the prevalent rhythm is less dehumanized.
She’s a warrior. For her every means is acceptable, which sometimes includes small arrangements with the truth. Julie is an everyday heroine. We see her with her children, her colleagues, her friends, in her job interview. Each time, she isn’t quite the same woman and it's the sum of these women which tells us who she's. She has her own shortcomings, can be her own worst enemy, and can be tenacious to the point of obstinacy. She's both strong and fallible. Julie is highly physical, and you can feel her experience in the way she occupies the space. Because of the messes she has to deal with, Julie must constantly be one step ahead, planning for the future; just like a chess player, she said always several moves ahead. Paris is filmed in a rather unusual way, sharp and metallic although it essentially a mineral city. The urban surroundings aren’t typically Paris, and could have been any other large city. The inspiration comes from the way New York was filmed in certain 1970s movies. Paris hues are in orangish-gray tones, while my decision was to make them colder and cruder, as this corresponds well with the state of mind Julie is in the minute she sets foot in this hostile territory.
"Full Time" is interested in the idea of repetitiveness in everyday life, having to repeat the same gestures endlessly at work and at home, as though caught in perpetual motion. The job shows us the extent to which Julie is attached to performance and perfection. The position of head chambermaid in a luxury hotel is not simple. There are specific skills and knowledge involved, precise tasks and gestures, and codes one needs to abide by. The film takes place during a massive nation-wide strike that spreads through all sectors of activity. Everything starts breaking down everywhere, in the image of what's happening to the leading character. The film wants the individual and collective struggles to follow parallel courses for us to gradually understand that they're connected, that they tell the same story, that one is the consequence of the other. Julie is stuck in a societal blind spot. She belongs to a category of workers who are the most vulnerable, for whom going on strike or having any form of representation is pretty much impossible. We remembered how, during the strike in Paris in 1995, we'd been very impressed with the way people who lived in and out of Paris showed great solidarity and found ways to function differently in their urban environment, walking, hitchhiking, helping one another.
"Full Time" also plays with the rhythm of the day and above all that of the night. Living far from your place of work means leaving early and coming home late. Establishing Julie’s departures and returns home when it’s dark outside allowed me to convey the very long days, to broach the child-care logistics issues as well as the downsides of life in the country. This relation to time also gives the film the possibility to have the sun rise and set in public transportation, thus easily structuring days that succeed one another at an increasingly fast pace, without losing track of the story.
Written by Gregory Mann
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