Mark Reviews Movies: FULL TIME

Full Time, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 2, 2023

There's a genuine sense of terror to Full Time, despite the simplicity and everyday nature of its setup—or, more likely, because of those qualities. Imagine if your paycheck or some regular source of income doesn't arrive this week. Imagine if your car breaks down or some systemic catastrophe strikes the public transportation you take to work every day, but be sure also to know that your boss expects and insists that you make it to work on time despite the commuting issues that are completely out of your control.

For most people, life is one or two mishaps, accidents, or unforeseen events away from potential disaster. Writer/director Eric Gravel doesn't just see that reality. He turns it into a sort of working-class thriller filled with tension that is, at certain times, almost unbearable. The level of verisimilitude here in unmistakable, and Gravel's sense of empathy puts us right into the middle of a disaster-in-waiting—all the more unshakeable because of how ordinary the steps leading to that possible calamity are.

The story begins with what might be last moment of blissful peace for Julie Roy (Laure Calamy), a divorced mother of two kids. She's asleep when we first see her, breathing the slow breaths of a sound slumber—until the alarm on her cellphone chimes, signaling the start of yet another day. The kids need breakfast and to be taken to a neighbor named Madame Lusigny (Geneviève Mnich), who babysits for Julie. Then, it's off to work as the head chambermaid at a fancy hotel in Paris for Julie.

On an ordinary day, this involves a train ride from her suburban home to the city, followed by a bus or subway adventure to the hotel. This is a perfectly ordinary day for Julie, in that she needs to drop off her kids at the neighbors, get to work on time, and make sure she's home before her kids become a bit too much for their older caretaker. It's not an ordinary day, though, because there's a strike unfolding, with public transit employees starting to organize and to miss shifts in order to make a statement.

Julie makes it to work this particular morning, but her luck won't last. That's not even the beginning of her problems, either.

If it's not one thing, it's another for Julie, and all of those other things, as well as the one thing itself, seem to be piling up all at once for her. The strength of Gravel's storytelling is in how each and every complication is completely commonplace, while the amalgamation of them into something overwhelming and inescapable is perfectly believable.

The plot, such as it is, just follows Julie over the course of a week or so in this escalating nightmare of job dissatisfaction, employment uncertainty, commuting troubles, financial shortfalls, and domestic anxieties. One could say that Julie's problems begin with the public transit strike, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. She's also awaiting an alimony payment from her ex-husband, who has missed the usual date and now is unreachable via phone. Julie counts on that monthly income, and she especially needs it now. There's the problem with the trains and buses, for one thing, but it's also the birthday of her son Nolan (Nolan Arizmendi) in a few days, with a party to be held and a present still for Julie to buy.

At work, Julie's boss Sylvie (Anne Suarez) is down her back about some assessment reports, and meanwhile, there's the simple fact that Julie doesn't want but definitely needs this job. She has an interview at a marketing firm, for a job that's more in line with her education and her employment history, and now, she not only has to arrange for a co-worker to cover her shift or sneak away with the risk of Sylvie noticing. Julie also has to navigate the absence of public transportation to get to the interview, while still appearing presentable for the occasion, and figure out how to get home on time, before the neighbor decides she's finally had enough of Julie not listening to her complaints about being late.

The intensity of this story is both in how all of these issues form at the same time, while each one complicates the others in assorted ways, and in how we realize that one misstep on Julie's part—or one accident beyond her control—could send her entire life into an unstoppable tailspin. If she doesn't get the new job, she has risked and potentially lost the job she currently has for no reason. If she loses her current job, her financial woes will only become graver (One might think there's an easy solution to this, complicated by Julie's pride or stubbornness, but Gravel covers that in an equally despairing and ironic scene when everything seems lost, reminding us that things can always get worse).

All of this, of course, puts Julie's life with her son and daughter (played by Sasha Lemaitre Cremaschi) in jeopardy, because the ex is now in a committed relationship and the neighbor's daughter believes Julie is behaving in a negligent way. The components of and the roles that we play in life are all interconnected in some way, and if just one link breaks, there's no telling how much of that chain will fail.

The film is subtly terrifying in its depiction of this fact, particularly in the functioning of Gravel's filmmaking—with its ceaseless momentum (Even when Julie is waiting for a bus or train that isn't coming, it feels like a buildup of potential energy that's being denied an outlet) and claustrophobic use of close-ups. The other vital element of the film's success is Calamy's performance, which is bolstered by how instantly sympathetic the actor is in coming across as someone recognizably ordinary. Beyond that, though, Calamy is completely attuned to the downward trajectory of Julie being assured and in control toward a desperation that becomes increasingly difficult for her to hide.

We feel that desperation, too. The story of Full Time is constructed from comprehensible fears and sources of worry, and in that firm focus on the ordinary, Gravel has made a kind of thriller that is anything but ordinary.

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