The Workshop [L’atelier] **** (2017, Marina Foïs, Matthieu Lucci, Florian Beaujean) – Movie Review

Marina Foïs stars as middle-aged Paris writer Olivia, who comes to the formerly prosperous, now depressed shipyard town La Ciotat, near Marseilles, one summer to hold a literary workshop for a small group of seven late teenagers supposedly to help them to integrate into the world of work.

The plan is communally to write a book of noir thriller fiction connected with the industrial past of their hometown, which would then be published. The sessions are lively, then uncomfortable, and one boy, Antoine (Matthieu Lucci) is provocative and aggressive. After he reads his all too-vivid  description of a mass murder, Olivia starts experiencing mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion to Antoine.

Co-writer/ director Laurent Cantet’s fully scripted but semi-improvised 2017 drama The Workshop [L’atelier] is both convincing and provocative. As it features a literary workshop, the screenplay would have to be good, and it is. The acting by Marina Foïs and the seven young amateur actors is outstanding, with Lucci exceptional, though he is certainly helped by the focus being on his character, and it being a fascinating, ambiguous role to play. The actors do wonders with just little glances and tiny grimaces that say everything. Cantet is definitely right to praise his actors, and not just in the ‘you were wonderful darling’ way.

[Spoiler alert] The film is ambiguous too, giving off mixed messages. The relationship between Olivia and Antoine is entirely ambiguous. Antoine has certainly rocked Olivia’s rather self-satisfied world, and his criticism of her novel is quietly but deeply devastating to her. He brings out all her insecurities, and just as certainly arouses her sexual interest him as well as intellectual. He fascinates her. Foïs and Lucci inhabit their peculiar characters vividly.

The video game that the film starts with and the young people’s reliance on phones, computers and social media seem to indicate that Cantet disapproves of all this and wants to go back to the era of books, novels and the printed word. But this is ambiguous too, as he feels these are the ways young people express themselves today, and it is just the same as when he was young, but with different means of expression. Everything is different but people are the same, is what he seems to be saying.

The ending can be viewed as optimistic or pessimistic, though the director views it as his most optimistic conclusion yet, and says he has been criticised for it. The film ends up a bit mysterious, and if it is a mystery drama, it is not the kind of film to solve its mysteries, it is way too subtle and intelligent for that. It wants to leave the viewers to make up their minds and come to their own conclusions. But Cantet clearly does want to look around and finds goodness and worth in people. He is no cynic, and he is certainly a good, subtle film-maker.

As the plan is for the young people to write a book of noir thriller fiction, it is inevitable that the movie would turn into a noir thriller, and this is the least successful segment of the movie. It suddenly strays from everyday subtlety to barely convincing thriller fiction. But it picks up and recovers, and Cantet finishes confidently and successfully. It may sound dull, but actually the closer the film sticks to the Workshop, the more riveting it is.

Marina Foïs as Olivia Dejazet, Matthieu Lucci as Antoine, Florian Beaujean as Etienne, Mamadou Doumbia as Bouba, Mélissa Guilbert as Lola, Warda Rammach as Malika, Julien Souve as Benjamin, Issam Talbi as Fadi in The Workshop.

The main cast are Marina Foïs as Olivia Dejazet, Matthieu Lucci as Antoine, Florian Beaujean as Etienne, Mamadou Doumbia as Bouba, Mélissa Guilbert as Lola, Warda Rammach as Malika, Julien Souve as Benjamin, Issam Talbi as Fadi, with Olivier Thouret as Antoine’s cousin Teddy Chauvin.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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