Original subtitles

La vie comme �a is the first film Jean-Claude Brisseau made

on a professional basis.

In this film, Brisseau inserted a lot of behavioural phenomena

which he had noticed in the course of his career

as a teacher in the Parisian suburbs.

At first it seems like a disorganised catalogue of observations

of the most traumatic scenes of life in Bagnolet.

The dramatic elements, though drawn from reality,

are concentrated in an unreal and very sensationalist fashion.

And then, little by little, via the monstrous and the derisory,

the structure of the film begins to emerge

as the action closes in around the main character, Agn�s.

La vie comme �a draws an implacable line:

the hell that is Bagnolet,

the inexorable fate of the residents of its housing estates,

Greek tragedy transposed into the 93rd d�partement..

The film is punctuated by violent deaths,

defenestrations, noted mostly with indifference

by people who have become blas� in the face of these constant dramas.

I will never forget the teenager endlessly circling on his bike

around the corpse of a woman who has just jumped from a high window.

There is not yet that which becomes evident in Brisseau's later work:

the mix of sordid naturalism and the dreamlike.

Although the excessive accumulation of dramatic elements

verges on the dreamlike.

The film, shot in 1979,

was the first to show and denounce

the practice known as 'the golden cupboard'.

In a company, when the boss wanted to get rid

of an employee he didn't have the right to sack,

he'd put her alone in a little room, either with nothing at all to do

or with a completely pointless task.

She'd get constantly hassled until she either cracked or resigned.

Brisseau exposes the omnipresence of idiotic tasks,

for example, constantly stamping things

or compiling documents into bundles, only to throw them in the bin.

The lady responsible for the stamping is Rosette.

This was her first film,

before she became one of Eric Rohmer's favourite actresses,

notably in Le rayon vert, Lion d'Or at Venice,

and, before she moved on to novels, the remarkable Le grand m�chant. p�re.

Brisseau also shows the hoops one has to jump through to get a council flat.

In contrast, he portrays the solidarity

among women working in a company.

With great wisdom, Brisseau chooses not to finish his scenes

when the viewer knows exactly what is going to happen.

Brisseau doesn't explain everything.

The viewer can read between the lines, between the shots.

Brisseau shows the head of the union representative

which barely rises above a bar in the foreground

when he is confronting the boss.

A visual symbol to translate the impossibility of making himself heard.

An unexpected figure: the false interview

in which a character directly expresses how he feels

as if responding to a journalist of whom there is no other evidence.

Very powerful didacticism.

A quarter of a century before the current troubles in the Paris suburbs,

Jean-Claude Brisseau seems to have said all there is to say on the issue.