Vincent Lindon plays an unemployed family man desperate to find a job in THE MEASURE OF A MAN
THE MEASURE OF A MAN (LA LOI DU MARCHÉ) (Stéphane Brizé, 2015)
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, April 15
www.kinolorber.com5
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said. In Stéphane Brizé’s The Measure of a Man, Vincent Lindon excels as a husband and father who is trying his best to survive in a changing world, fraught with challenge and controversy, that has seemingly turned its back on him. In an extraordinary performance embodying the calm before a storm that never comes, Lindon plays Thierry Taugourdeau, a working-class man who has been out of a job since the factory where he toiled for more than twenty years closed twenty months ago. He meets with job counselors, takes classes, interviews over Skype, and joins his fellow laid-off colleagues to figure out what to do next, but it is hard for him to have to start over in his fifties while trying to support his wife (Karine De Mirbeck) and take care of a teenage son who has cerebral palsy, played by Matthieu Schaller, who does have the neurological disorder. When Thierry finally does find employment, it’s not exactly a dream job, but he attempts to soldier on even when he is asked to do things that are against his moral and ethical fiber. “We all get to choose,” he says when his fellow former factory workers talk about taking action against the company that laid them off. “In my case, if only for my mental health, I prefer to draw a line and move on. Does that make me a coward?”
The third film teaming Lindon and Brizé (following Mademoiselle Chambon and A Few Hours of Spring), The Measure of a Man has a poignant, realistic feel, unfolding in highly believable, disheartening scenes that are sometimes frustratingly slow, with Brizé and cowriter Olivier Gorce guiding viewers through the procedural machinations as Thierry tries to get his life back on track. You’ll often wish Thierry did more — that he prepared better for an interview, or more carefully chose his words when speaking to a counselor about his son’s future — but part of the point is that he’s doing the best he can in a difficult situation, and he’s only equipped for so much. The vast majority of the cast is made up of nonprofessional actors who really work in the banks and megamarts shown in the film, which is shot with a sometimes shaky handheld camera by cinematographer Eric Dumont and edited by Anne Klotz, both of whom come from the documentary world. Despite some plot meandering, the film is worth seeing for Lindon’s marvelously paced performance, which earned him Best Actor at Cannes and the Césars. A kind of French neorealist film for the twenty-first century, The Measure of a Man opens April 15 at Lincoln Plaza and Metrograph, with Lindon in person at the former after the 7:05 show and the latter after the 7:30 screening. In conjunction with the new release, Metrograph is also presenting “Four Films Starring Vincent Lindon,” which concludes with Claire Denis’s Bastards on April 16 at 3:00.