Rules of the Game - True/False Film Fest

Rules of the Game

A bittersweet, sometimes hilarious look at a French employment agency that mentors the young and marginalized.
Director: Claudine Bories, Patrice Chagnard
Runtime: 1:46
In-person: story editor Catherine Bizern
Fest Year: 2015
Directors Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard train their cameras on the workers and clients of Ingeus, a French consulting firm that locates work for the young and unemployed. With a snappy pace, we track a handful of millennials as they navigate the Ingeus bootcamp. The primary obstacle facing each is an inability to sell themselves to prospective employers. There’s something fascinating, amusing, and sometimes squirm-inducing about watching these prospective workers struggling in coaching sessions; some, like the singular Lolita, are not well-adjusted to the dictates of the workplace or even simple social conventions. Bories and Chagnard find a way to bring out humor (their pithy title cards work extremely well) while also eliciting empathy. In the film’s final minutes, it transcends its deceptively simple surface to become something much more hard-hitting about the modern global economy. (CB)