Laure Calamy in Full Time (Music Box Films)

War is hell, but can work be worse? Like recent films Emily the Criminal and Zero Fucks Given, Full Time is a picture of horror-movie capitalism—a tightening world of locked bank accounts, horrendous commutes, degrading jobs, and fast-dwindling stores of favors to call in. And it takes place in France, a nation Americans tend to mythologize as a land of long lunches and employee security. Those who believe such bromides would do well to see this nerve-wracking movie, which presents a pitiless French face of the modern workplace.

Single mother Julie (Laure Calamy) works as a maid in a luxury hotel. Her days start early and end late, bookended by exhaustion and pitch dark. Julie depends on an elderly neighbor for child care who is getting tired of Julie’s late arrivals in the evenings, an irritation worsened by a transit strike. Writer and director Éric Gravel conveys the bleakness of Julie’s daily slog with endless vistas of grim suburbs shot out of the windows of trains and buses—trains and buses she races not to miss and that sometimes don’t even show up.

Work is a regimented affair with heavy expectations and a micromanaged timetable. Relations with coworkers fray under the pressure, and tardiness and stress-induced mistakes wind Julie up with anxiety. Parisian attitudes don’t help much: “If you’re tired of cleaning up rich people’s shit,” sneers her boss, “get another job.” Julie is actually trying to obtain a better position as a market research manager, but a job interview will require finagling a schedule with little wiggle room. Throughout, the hectic handheld camera heightens the sense of entrapment and racing against time.

The troubles Julie faces are staggering. What makes her situation more painful is that when she’s desperate, she makes decisions that worsen her predicament. The cycle of compounded issues Gravel puts her through can be excruciating. 

In a demanding role, Calamy often seems resigned at situations that might make Julie thoroughly dejected, or at least enraged. It’s unclear if this is an acting decision or a reflection of Julie’s essential optimism—Julie is portrayed as a caring mother and a decent person in spite of a few backfiring attempts to beat the system. One admires Julie’s pluck, but wonders how on earth she can go on.

Harshly, sometimes repetitively but always convincingly, the frenetic Full Time makes the point that for many, it’s worse than a jungle out there. It’s a bloody miserable inferno. Hell, in other words.