FULL TIME (2021)

 

Written & Directed By: Eric Gravel

Cinematography: Victor Seguin

Editor: Mathilde Van De Moortel

Cast: Laura Calamy, Anne Suarez, Genevive Mnich, Nolan Arizmendi, Sasha Lamaitre Cremaschi, Cyril Guei, Lucie Gallo, Agathe Dronne, Mathilde Weil, Dana Fiaque 

Just when Julie finally gets an interview for a job that will let her raise her children better, she runs into a national transportation strike.

This film seems to have the mentality that when it rains it pours.

It seems the first to be such a simple film. You know a single mother trying to do better for her kids and her life by trying to get a better job you know pays more maybe a little closer to home better hours. 

Then it turns it into a thrill a minute story of tension as she has to deal with bringing the kids to this babysitter, then trying to get to work on time where you know either trains are off schedule or late or you know the workers are having a strike, and She has to take a different route or find a totally different way to go to work 

Even you know, kind of flirting with someone who she’s not necessarily really attracted to, but she knows it suite on her just so she can get a ride and then shockingly him rebuffing her. so that even her sideline romance seems to fail in the middle of all her other hardships you rule for her throughout, but feel the loss.

And then not only that struggling to get to work late with her supervisor notices and penalizing her for but then also trying to get back home on time to pick up her kids on time you know it’s not quite run Lola run or that was it character dealing with all these different fates and felt kind of mystical this is just hard-core reality.

Justice things seem to go positive for this character they always seem to be a curveball throw as we watch in the way that she has to maneuver for survival as she faces one challenge or dilemma at a time, and usually after another close together.

It’s a portrait of one single mother that speaks for a number of them out there as they try to do their best for themselves, and most importantly, their families, and the seemingly increasing levels of difficulty and challenges they must face it seems even just to break even.

Her ex seems to disappear, avoid, and take no responsibility or offer solutions. You admire her to a degree, and the film teaches. You have to take it day by day moment by moment, each one seems to be worse and truly a horror film of its own.

Thank you to John Waters, whose list of 2023‘s best movies listed this film as one of them, or else I probably never would’ve heard of it, or probably not for some as the film is exhilarating and exemplary 

Grade: A