16 December 2020

Jean Eustache's Offre d'emploi (1980)

 

Offre d'emploi was Jean Eustache's contribution to the television series Contes Modernes, which featured stories dedicated to the world of work. It lasts for just 18 minutes and was his last work. After finding a job advertisement in the paper while drinking a coffee in a café Pelletier (Michel Delahaye) has an initial inerview and follows this up, as requested, by posting a letter that he writes over a beer in another café.

Letters are subjected to a graphologist's/psychologist's cold, crude, even brutal pseudo-scientific examination and in the end two potential candidates are picked, of whom Pelletier is one. The boss asks the interviewer what she thinks, which is very scientific. Maybe Eustache was trying to make a point, and if so it's a good one: avoid being employed by anyone as the entire system is arbitrary and you're worth more than that!

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