The Measure of a Man [La loi du marché ] **** (2015, Vincent Lindon, Karine de Mirbeck, Matthieu Schaller) – Movie Review

The Measure of a Man [La loi du marché ] is a marvellous movie, a perfect study of a good, decent man laid low by circumstance, abused by almost everyone he meets. It’s hard to portray an entirely good character, or a wholly ordinary character, and Vincent Lindon does it beautifully. He won the Best Actor award at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Odd that, because he hardly seems to be acting at all. Now that’s a sign of clever, great, classy acting.

He plays a suddenly unemployed French factory worker desperately trying to make ends by desperately going through all the options at the job centre, pointlessly retraining, trying to sell the family’s beloved mobile home trailer and finally by becoming a store detective at a supermarket. Humiliation piles on humiliation, as Thierry Taugourdeau gets more and more desperate and despondent.

Co-writer/director Stéphane Brizé just breezes through all this with no problem at all, presenting apparently random scenes from a life to tell a whole story, just vignettes, peeps into another man’s growing hell, letting scene after scene run at length in real time, then end suddenly and abruptly, though satisfyingly, like he does with the film itself. You kind of don’t see the end coming, and wish the film went on longer, explained more, told more of its hero’s story, but then you realise just how satisfying and appropriate the ending is.

The whole film is done briskly and cleanly, in a way that Ken Loach would approve. It’s naturalistic and humanistic. It’s a heart-tugger, but done without sentimentality. It is a compilation of scenes from a single life, yes, but the implication is, this is all of us. If we are good and decent, we are all likely to be targets of abuse.

Karine de Mirbeck is exceptional as the hero’s wife, another wholly good and decent character. The film isn’t about her, but, when she’s on screen, it really is. The couple have a special needs son (Matthieu Schaller), whose care and education are their paramount priorities, but the fact is they can hardly care for themselves the way things are stacked up against them.

Unlike a synthetic heart-tugger like this week’s release Me Before You, which hasn’t a real atom in its admittedly attractive body, this is an incredibly moving film of true emotion. And, if you have tears to shed, Thierry and his family are worth crying over.

It was filmed at Auberville, Calvados, France.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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