Between Two Worlds

Marianne is a well known writer. For her new book she tries something: to hide her identity, take temporary work and write about low paid labour from inside. She goes to a port town in northern France. She takes cleaning work and starts on the ferries, cleaning cabins in the limited time between crossings. She becomes friends with the women she works with. They do not know what she is doing. Emmanuel Carrère directs. Juliette Binoche plays Marianne. The source is the book by the journalist Florence Aubenas, who really did this: she concealed her name and worked in cleaning jobs for months, and the book was much discussed in France. The matter at the centre is the method itself. Marianne can leave whenever she likes and the others cannot; the narrative does not hide that inequality and the last section calls it to account directly. Most of the cast are not professionals; people who really do that work play parts close to themselves, and that determines the texture of the film. The cleaning on the ferry is shown in real measures: how many cabins, how many minutes, how many people. Emmanuel Carrère is known as a writer and this is his second feature. Who it is for: viewers who follow French social realism and narratives about work. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the narrative carries a thesis, and the ending is uncomfortably unresolved.