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.
Essentially just a character study about the drone mindset, albeit one given decent texture by Rohrwacher’s performance, the film follows Carla in the first weeks of her new job as the human resources manager at a health insurance firm led by swaggering CEO Arnaud (a devilish Vincent Lindon, in his sixth film with Brizé). In a nervy boardroom sequence early on, Carla and her fellow executives present Arnaud with a glossy corporate video meant to attract a new generation of suits with inclusive messaging and feelgood images of able-bodied employees working alongside disabled ones.
A rat-a-tat drum score and fidgety handheld camerawork gives a cheeky, satirical edge to Arnaud’s ensuing tantrum, where he rails against the video’s political correctness with the arrogance of a so-called truth-teller. The video should attract “winners,” the celebration of strength over weakness, the cornerstone of a corporate mandate that privileges profit-generating at all costs and fosters cutthroat attitudes that embrace this goal.
After Arnaud’s traumatizing tirade, Brizé shifts the focus entirely to Carla, who is now tense with imposter syndrome that perversely pushes her to work even harder — she knew the video was “creepy,” too. Brizé’s script, co-written by Coralie Amédéo and Olivier Gorce, sticks to low-hanging fruit in its mockery of corporate life, as Carla supervises the filming of a new video conceived by a pseudo-auteur, as well as actually “creepy” team-building workshops that double as humiliation rituals.
Brizé weaves between these absurd moments and two slow-simmering crises that cause Carla to begin doubting her diehard commitment to work. Carla has co-custody of her son Louis (Adrien Bobinet) with ex-husband Olivier (David Talbot), though recently she’s been canceling or pushing back her weeks. Louis sends Carla daily video missives that she listens to during her commute, otherwise the two video chat while Carla eats takeout in the office — and only half these talks are pleasant because Carla fixates on his mediocre math scores. While tender Olivier dedicates every weekend to fun activities with his son, Carla doesn’t realize she’s pushing him away. It’s hardly worth it. Carla’s biggest breakthrough at work is coming up with a banal slogan: “Care for our customers, care for our employees.”
Brizé’s refusal to show Carla in any other context outside of work gives the film a stale, claustrophobic quality, as if she’s permanently locked away at a distance — as far from her son across the city as the New York friend she Zooms with. These people are satellites with glitchy connections, half-humans whose voices she can turn off with a push of the sound button.
Meanwhile, Carla receives a voice recording that proves that one of the company’s most efficient team leaders, Madame Lalouette (Carine Rouvier), has been verbally abusing the timid Madame Morel (Sandra Le Gall). Knowing that Madame Lalouette’s sales numbers are too high to fire her, Carla attempts to transfer Madame Morel to a different department — a move that irritates her superiors and highlights her weakness. Madame Morel may be meeting her target sales, but everyone else in her team has been overperforming, which is enough of a reason to get rid of her and the liability problem she represents.
Notwithstanding one comically exaggerated outburst where Carla loses it while tele-tutoring Louis, Rohrwacher’s precision allows Carla the subtlest evolution— though perhaps too subtle to have much of a dramatic impact in a story where the titular soldier follows orders down to the very last frame. We notice flickers of a moral conscience begin to shine through Carla’s anodyne professionalism, but is that enough? Awareness-raising never is.
