THE STORY – Carla, a 43-year-old high-performing executive newly recruited as HR manager of a major insurer, is tasked with rebuilding its brand in a corporate environment where vulnerability is not an asset.
THE CAST – Alba Rohrwacher, Vincent Lindon, David Talbot, Adrien Bobinet & Sharif Andoura
THE TEAM – Stéphane Brizé (Director/Writer), Coralie Amédéo & Olivier Gorce (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 102 Minutes
The workplace environment has always been a fertile ground for exploring intriguing conflicts. The territory is inherently laced with power dynamics and warring interests that make for worthwhile stories to tell. Even after attitudes shifted to outside of traditional settings slightly, the office space can still be presented as a hostile arena where participants fight to the death in order to achieve glory. It may be a different kind of bloodshed that is spilled on the battlefield, but it’s still a treacherous fight that requires tenacity and a disregard for procedures that are necessary to cling onto one’s humanity. “A Good Little Soldier” aims to capture the swirling storm at the center of such combat, and its portrait is alluring if also slight in its overall commentary.
The story centers on Carla (Alba Rohrwacher), a business executive with a respectable career who has just been hired as the HR manager of a major insurance company. She looks to tackle the job head on, though she’s awash with a multitude of insecurities in the pursuit of pleasing her superiors, while the CEO (Vincent Lindon) is pushing his team to deliver on a branding assignment to reach new potential employees. She’s also tasked to monitor the performance status of the company and to ensure everyone is living up to the high standards that have been set. During this process, someone comes forward with an accusation of abuse from a co-worker and a toxic landscape that has been persistent. Carla struggles to find the balance of wanting to protect those against any threats while also being at the mercy of a company that values the bottom line over the well-being of those it employs.
From the very first moment as scenes of public transit commuters are shown busily moving through subways and travel hubs, there’s a clear emphasis on the hectic jungle that must be traversed in order to achieve these professional goals. They’re about the only scenes we get outside the office that Stéphane Brizé allows to be shown, confining this perspective only to the perimeter of the prison these characters have forced themselves into. It’s a mostly engaging atmosphere that allows for pointed conversations to drive the momentum, even if the aesthetics try too hard to compensate for that potential stillness. The filmmaking opts for a documentary style, with handled cameras that occasionally toss in zooms to make the action more exciting. It’s a little jarring, but not quite as much as the excessive jump cuts which really disrupt the rhythm of the storytelling. The direction is a competent showcase of the cutthroat attitude of this world, but its attempts at unsettling the monotony are also not entirely effective either.
There is an obvious hypocrisy the narrative wants to highlight as well in the irony of an insurance company failing to provide a safe and comforting place to work. The motto of the new campaign is “We care for our customers. We care for our employees.” But the reality is far from that. The mission statement absolutely puts profits over people, with Carla being told she should willingly justify actions of verbal abuse if they are directed at employees who are underperforming. The script doesn’t always follow logical steps when analyzing these processes, and a broader critique of the insidious culture at large is only represented by the harsh political attitudes of the CEO. Even Carla’s suffering domestic life is a not-very-subtle mirroring of her job, confronting her son who is struggling with school work with the same amount of hostility she is forced to deal with on a daily basis. It’s an underlined metaphorical connection that doesn’t deepen the thematic value the story is attempting to pursue. The connections being drawn are compelling for the most part, but that has more to do with performances and less with the writing.
Speaking of those performances, Rohrwacher does indeed deliver a captivating performance in a role that requires her to frantically move between a range of emotions. It’s a more engrossing turn when she’s forced to bottle her bigger frustrations, unable to voice the dissent to her superiors in a manner that is satisfactory. When she is only forced to stew within her utter defeat against a system that is as emotionally punishing as the one she currently occupies, it’s riveting to watch her internalize that turmoil. It’s also represented in Sandra Le Gall as an employee so beaten up by an organization that her sullen face can barely react against the vitriol being thrown her way. When Carla blows up at her son for failing to fully grasp the mathematics homework during their zoom lessons, Adrien Bobinet’s frozen look of terror is frighteningly realistic. They are all good examples of attempting to survive such aggression. Lindon is impactful as the domineering boss, able to cut deep into the soul with off-handed remarks that land so cruelly in their cold delivery. It’s a role that doesn’t ask much more of him beyond that, but he still leaves a memorable impression.
Most of what “A Good Little Soldier” presents is an enthralling spectacle that finds tension in many sequences, right up until the very end when Carla is forced to confront the decisions that may keep her in this noxious place. That anxiety is sold through Rohrwacher’s performance, and the rest of the ensemble finds their own ways to embody that unrelenting dread that is so persistent. The filmmaking helps to underline this mindset as well, though it often too readily relies on stylistic flourishes that also don’t give that much dimension to any thematic commentary it is meant to highlight. Still, there is a relatable stress that’s displayed within the film that is accurately sketched, and in that regard, the film finds success in portraying the lengths a company, and its subordinates, will go to maintain such standards.
