The Job
French job seekers are pitted against each other in bland reality-show fashion.
DIRECTED BY DIDIER CROS (France, World Showcase)
Friday, April 27, 9 p.m.
Sunday, April 29, 1:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 6, 1:15 p.m.
Cumberland (159 Cumberland Street)
This documentary’s premise is pretty simple: film a job interview. A recruiting firm seeks new insurance salespeople and has called in a group of applicants, having told them very little about the position. In a meeting room, interviewers put each candidate through an initial test: sell us on the person next to you being the ideal person for the titular job. The result feels like a reality-show pilot stretched out to 90 minutes.
There is, without question, some interest in studying how people behave when they are desperate for work, but the sterile approach here disappoints. At one point, someone suggests that the French recruiting firm’s confrontational tactics might be “too American.” In reality, American-reality-TV style trashiness is exactly what’s missing here.
The footage of the various evaluation tactics is enlivened by interviews with the participants, who often offer dissections of their competition or of the grueling and esoteric interview methods. After day one, the group is whittled down to just three, but not before one man drops out, declaring the whole thing to be not his style. Day two is an interview in front of a panel that asks harsh questions like, “Are you stressed? Because you look stressed.” The whole time, we’re left to wonder whether there is even a job at all, or if this is only one big, cruel prank.