The final part of Stéphane Brizé’s unofficial “work trilogy,” Another World, is a kind of counterpart to the previous film, The Measure of a Man. Like its predecessor, it addresses the position of employees, management, and the inhumanity of the economic system, but this time the perspective is on a manager caught in the pressures of the machinery of capitalism.
Brizé’s regular Vincent Lindon plays Philippe Lemesle, an executive manager of a multinational company. At the same time as Philippe’s marriage to Anna (Sandrine Kiberlain) is heading towards final separation and their teenage son (Anthony Bajon) is experiencing his own psychological battles; the company’s top management demands increasingly harsh efficiency measures and unreasonable layoffs from its middle management.
As the psychological pressure cooker simmers, Brizé closely observes his characters, alternating between cold corporate meetings and intimate domestic scenes to show how work gradually intrudes into all areas of life. The conflict does not arise from whether Philippe is a good or bad, but from how the corporate structures of the “another world” can gradually strip a person of their humanity and private life.
Milja Mikkola