The Invisibles

A day shelter for homeless women in Anzin is being closed because too few of the women it serves are returning to ordinary life. The social workers are given three months, at which point they stop following the rules and start getting results: invented CVs, fabricated references, jobs found through favours and, where necessary, outright lies. Louis-Julien Petit's real decision was the casting. Alongside professionals like Audrey Lamy, Corinne Masiero, Noémie Lvovsky and Déborah Lukumuena, women who have actually lived on the street play themselves. That keeps the comedy out of dangerous territory, because the joke is never on them but on the system. Adolpha van Meerhaeghe, seventy years old, is the discovery, playing Chantal, who served a long sentence for killing her abusive husband. The tone is a tightrope. Because Petit built it as a crowd pleaser, the real consequences of the closure get softened and the ending is too comfortable. It became a sleeper hit in France, selling close to a million tickets. Who it is for: viewers who like social subjects handled with humour. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a film as hard as its subject.