a flat denunciation of the exploitation of the most precarious

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT

Threatened with eviction from the accommodation she occupies with her 14-year-old son, Inès (Louise Bourgoin) is urgently looking for a new job. She applies for a position as a caretaker for Anti-squat, a company allowing companies to temporarily house residents in vacant buildings in order to protect them from possible squatters. Taken on probation for two months, Inès supervises occupants forced to comply with strict rules: no children, no parties, no animals and obligation to maintain the common areas – a free job which, in the long run, increases the value of the building.

After Corporate (2016), Nicolas Silhol continues his consistent denunciation of the tyranny of the world of work, the exploitation of the most precarious and the cult of profit. A series of moral dilemmas are formulated in the conscience of her heroine, perpetually torn between her principles and a “ride or die” which ends up getting the better of her.

If anti squatinspired by a legal device experimented recently in France, held there a subject which promised a multitude of visual ideas, the director – who postpones the work of staging and incarnation – remains hooked until the end to his flat political dissertation on capitalism and the banality of evil.

A discourse far too heavy to bear for actors forced to coldly recite their score, reduced to narrative functions that they never have the opportunity to exceed. If Silhol has the good idea not to choose the most optimistic outcome for his heroine, he spoils this slight thinning with a most naive finale.