52 Films by Women Vol 10. 30. AT WORK (À Pied d’Oeuvre) (Director: Valérie Donzelli)

 

Pictured: 'Are you tired, old man?' Divorced writer-turned-day labourer, Paul (Bastien Bouillon) works for less than UK minimum wage in the French social drama, 'At Work' (À Pied d’Oeuvre), adapted from Franck Courtès’ 2023 autobiographical account by Gilles Marchand and the film's director Valérie Donzelli. Still courtesy of Diaphana Distribution (France) 

We see a perfectly beautiful stretch of patterned wallpaper, red on white. Then a mallet bursts through. Before long, the wall of a room in a house is rendered into dust, the rubble swept up into plastic sacks, one of which is loaded onto a truck by Paul Marquet (Bastien Bouillon), a bespectacled 42-year-old, divorced day labourer who is the protagonist of French director Valérie Donzelli’s eighth feature film, À Pied d’Oeuvre (At Work). Adapted from Franck Courtès’ 2023 autobiographical account of his own switch from photographer to handyman, Donzelli and her co-writer Gilles Marchand fashion a film that describes a mental health crisis as much as takes aim at internet-enabled devaluation of manual labour.

At its 2025 Venice Film Festival premiere, the film was derided for its middle-class appropriation of working-class woes, namely that people are forced to do one-off jobs at rates below minimum wage because of competition, capitalism keeping them in poverty. Courtès and the filmmakers show the individuals who hire Paul as oblivious to the exploitation that they perpetuate. One young woman expects him to have tools to mow a lawn to ensure she can get her deposit back but only pays him 18 Euro. Paul completes this task – his first job – in three-and-a-half hours using a set of shears. The client’s user review borders on the sarcastic.

The film repeatedly shows customers who hire manual labourers never seeing or valuing the worker, just the job. In one sequence, Paul is shown a set of potted trees on a balcony that he is required to uproot and dispose of, smoothing the soil in each tray. The man who hires him shuts him outside, as if he were a pet that he wanted to forget about for several hours. We see Paul strain to pull up roots, incurring calluses on his knuckles and putting pressure on his back. As he works, the family ignores him. A woman types of a computer. A man sits in his lounge reading a book. Donzelli frames Paul so we can see the contrast. A few years back, Paul may have had this man’s life. When he finishes, the man asks about the other side of the balcony. ‘It goes right round.’ Atypically, he offers to pay double for Paul to finish the job.

Paul’s rough patch begins when his ex-wife (Donzelli herself) emigrates to Canada with their two teenage children, a seventeen-year-old girl (Eve Oron) and a university student-age boy (Oscar Tillet). Paul gives up his apartment, saying ‘why do I need three rooms?’ moving to a basement studio that he is allowed to live in rent-free. This allows for numerous scenes that show the lives of well-heeled Parisians, whose shoes and dogs are seen through Paul’s high window, passing Paul by; at one point, I thought a dog was going to metaphorically urinate on him. Paul’s apartment might just as well be a prison cell.  Paul receives 250 Euro a month in royalty payments for his photographs but has no other income. He changed profession from photographer to writer, giving up an income of between 3,000 and 7,500 Euro per month. However, his last published book only sold 5,000 copies. Paul has received an advance for his fourth book, ‘The Story of the End’, but his editor, Alice (Virginie Ledoyen) is unsatisfied with his manuscript. ‘It’s depressing,’ she tells him. ‘It’s a love story,’ Paul responds. Paul endeavours to re-write it.  However, he can’t make it more commercial.

Donzelli shoots flashbacks on grainy 16mm film. In one scene, Paul is standing on a sidewalk. A man rides up to him on a moped. ‘I’ll take it.’ He gives Paul a wad of bank notes, maybe three or four hundred euro, shown in close-up. The stranger rides off, as if taking Paul’s life with him at a knock-down price. The grainy image emphasises Paul’s devaluation.

Among the jobs that Paul wins on ‘Jobber’ is the removal of a mezzanine from a front room. His starting bid was 20 Euro. The young couple didn’t know what they were thinking when they installed it. The man has injured his neck and cannot help with lifting. We see Paul struggle with the weight of the metal staircase, which he separates from the top shelf. The young woman helps him carry it down a flight of stairs; outside the building, we expect Paul to dismantle it further, before disposing of the waste. The woman sits down. She is too exhausted. Paul is left to complete its removal on his own.

The film is pitched somewhere between black comedy and a portrait of loneliness. Were it a Roman General, its name would be Maximus Pathos. We see Paul complete his ‘Jobber’ profile, listing the work he would undertake and recording a video message, his first attempt being too dour. The reviews he receives are not of his work but of him. They are unnecessarily cruel. The gap between Paul and his social class is illustrated in two scenes. First, when he brings a cheaper bottle of wine to a party that is dismissed for its taste. Second, when his son phones him to say that he has secured a paid job at Morgan Stanley. His son seeks his father’s approval. Paul gives it. ‘I’ll send you money,’ his son tells him. ‘I don’t need it,’ Paul lies.

Not only does Paul itemise his expenses (3.90 Euro for coffee), he also takes notes on the people who hire him. In their homes, he looks at their feet to determine whether he should remove his shoes before starting work. Most of the people who hire him are his age or younger. He does the jobs that they refuse. Paul also provides a taxi service. ‘Do you charge for having to wait?’ he is asked by one customer. ‘No,’ Paul replies, even though there is a cost of time and potentially lost income to him. Paul chases approval, not aggressively but through silencing any objection he might raise, endeavouring to avoid one-star reviews. While he cannot turn himself into a ‘commercial’ writer, he is entirely a commercially subservient human being.

Pictured: Cleaning windows. Writer-turned- day labourer Paul (Bastien Bouillon) in a scene from the French social drama, 'At Work' ('À Pied d’Oeuvre'), adapted from Franck Courtès' 2023 memoir by Gilles Marchand and director Valérie Donzelli. Still courtesy of Diaphana Distribution (France)  

Paul’s family is both sceptical and embarrassed by his change of profession. Why doesn’t he return to photography? In an early scene, Donzelli shows (in a sweeping pan) Paul’s cameras and lenses, all of which are subsequently sold. We see Paul photograph one of his cameras using his mobile phone. The irony lingers. Paul’s father (André Marcon) offers him a signet ring to sell – ‘it was my father’s – but Paul initially refuses. In the end, he sells it but is offered a low price. ‘It’s not gold,’ a dealer tells him. ‘If it were, it would make a mark on this sheet. It is gold plated, but not of a high standard.’ The family heirloom is valued at 30 Euro. Paul celebrates his daughter’s 18^th birthday, giving her a present of a photograph that he took when she was seven years old. The photograph is described – the daughter by the pool with clouds reflected in the water – but not shown. The daughter expresses minimal appreciation, excusing herself by explaining that she has a party to attend. Paul asks his ex-wife if his daughter is mad with him. Needless to say, he can’t afford a flight to Canada. He wonders if his daughter has read his books. ‘None of us have,’ his ex-wife tells him. ‘We don’t want to see ourselves in your writing.’

It is inevitable that Paul would be recognised by one of his customers, in this instance by one of his former friends, whom he picks up in his car. Paul follows the man on Facebook. Paul drops him off and is about to drive away when the man asks for Paul’s number. He wants to hear all about his life. Later, they meet in a restaurant. ‘I’m paying,’ his friend tells him. However, it is not long before Paul walks out, experiencing both scorched pride and stinging shame.

Paul insists that he became a day labourer in order to write. However, his revised manuscript leaves his editor unenthusiastic; she all but asks for the advance back. His work elicits unexpected expressions of sympathy. Paul drives a woman home, asking her to sit in the front seat. We see her in profile, the light catching her make up. He offers to carry her bags. She expresses her gratitude – or desire – by inviting him into her bed. Paul is awkward. ‘I haven’t made love in a long time.’ ‘Neither have I,’ says the woman.

Paul is asked to leave the studio. His sister wants it for her child, the inference being that Paul doesn’t deserve the family’s help, doing little (in their eyes) to lift himself out of poverty. His computer is broken. A man in a computer repair shop tells him that his drive is irretrievable (a metaphor of sorts). We reflect, briefly, that the cost of computer diagnostics exceeds what Paul would charge for his services. The market is better regulated, we assume. Paul does some work in a bar and is invited to stay in the backroom. The bar owner, a woman, sees his notes. She gifts him a set of notebooks. ‘Write your book in these,’ she tells him. Paul sets to work on a new book, an expansion of his pen portraits of his customers. He recognises a man who works at the bar, who worked on the demolition project shown at the film’s opening. ‘Are you tired, old man?’ he asked Paul.

‘I am to misery what five o'clock in the evening in winter is to darkness: it is dark, but it is not yet night,’ Paul tells us in voiceover, a quotation from Courtès. Paul’s sadness doesn’t show on his face or in his responses to others but in the loneliness that is presented on screen. We wonder if it is a form of penitent self-mortification; Paul is like a monk whipping himself, holding himself to an aesthetic higher moral standard. Perhaps he has invited a depression for dinner lit by a single weeping wax candle.

Paul sends his written manuscript to Alice, who orders it to be typed up. She agrees to publish it but as Paul has already received an advance, she cannot pay him. Exploitation begets exploitation. We wonder whether Paul should have gone to another publisher.

In the film’s climax, Paul is seated in a bookshop signing books. He is texted the offer of some manual work. He texts back ‘Can you wait two hours?’ His son calls him. He read Paul’s new book, called ‘A Pied D’Oeuvre’. It moved him. The son is proud of his father. It is a moving moment, one of the few in the movie that isn’t transactional.

Reviewed at Screen Six, Filmhuis Den Haag, the Netherlands, Sunday 28 June 2026, 18:00 screening