Matthew Turner | On 29, Jun 2023

Director: Eric Gravel
Cast: Laure Calamy, Anne Suarez, Geneviève Mnich, Nolan Arizmendi, Sasha Lemaitre Cremaschi
Certificate: 15

Written and directed by Eric Gravel, Full Time (A Plein Temps) is the domestic single mother equivalent of Uncut Gems. The stakes may seem low, but make no mistake: this is the most gripping, high-tension thriller you’ll see all year. 

Call My Agent’s Laure Calamy plays Julie, a divorced mother of two young children who’s under pressure from all sides: the bank is hassling her for mortgage payments, her ex-husband has mysteriously disappeared without paying his alimony, her long-suffering child-minder has had enough and is threatening to withdraw her services and she’s constantly in trouble with her boss at the fancy hotel in Paris, where she works as head chambermaid.

When Julie gets the offer of a job interview, she seizes on it as a potential way out of her increasingly desperate situation. However, things keep going from bad to worse: the interview is on the other side of town, so she has to secretly leave work to do the interview and a train strike causes severe delays. And then there’s the small matter of her non-existent social life – including an excruciating encounter with a fellow single parent – as well as trying to fit in the arrangements for her son’s birthday party. 

Calamy is simply sensational as Julie, delivering a fully relatable performance that ensures the audience is entirely invested in her struggle – the way she quietly takes on board every new disaster is heart-breaking to watch. She also gives Julie an admirable whatever-it-takes attitude that somehow carries her through exhaustion, most notably when she has to assemble a trampoline for her son’s birthday party in the early hours of the morning. 

Gravel’s direction and sense of pace are extremely assured. The stakes may be the stuff of the domestic everyday, but he shoots and edits everything like a high-stakes thriller. Consequently, even Julie running to catch her commuter train delivers more nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat tension than many Hollywood thrillers manage in their entirety.

The editing is exceptional too, making us feel the sheer relentlessness of Julie’s plight, aided by some judicious jump-cuts. The effect is further heightened by some terrific sound design work and a superb electronic score by Irène Drésel. 

In short, this is unmissable, and one of the best films of the year. It marks out writer-director Gravel as a serious talent to watch. Highly recommended. 

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