The French filmmaker’s fourth film to compete in Venice follows a workaholic human resources manager as she undergoes an underwhelming moral and personal reckoning.
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Gaumont There’s not a single moment in Stéphane Brizé’s lukewarm workplace drama “A Good Little Soldier” where Alba Rohrwacher’s Carla Moretti isn’t at work — or on her way to the office, or at a coffee shop around the corner where she could scurry right back. Bowing in Venice’s main competition, and Brizé’s fourth time on the Lido, the film in many ways challenges the clichés we have about labor and the French, with their seemingly infinite congés and tendency to stop-drop-and-protest at the first sign of abuse. As the title suggests, Carla doesn’t just endure her job’s outsized demands on her time, energy, and soul, but is a workhorse by choice: a person willingly stripped of personality and independence like the sleek commercial everyplace (in fact, Paris’s anachronistically modern 13th arrondissement) where the story unfolds. Unfortunately, the film, too, could use a bit of punch to lift it out of the humdrum anti-corporate critique it takes for granted to be novel.
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