Cinema has never solved the problem at the heart of social realism. With the odd exception, most exposés of ‘how the other half lives’ are made by well-meaning outsiders, who turn impressions into melodrama. Coming from workhouse-level poverty, Charlie Chaplin got closer than most to depicting degradation and despair. But, for all their insight and integrity, everything from Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels to Chloé Zhao's Nomadland can struggle to bridge the gap. Even Ken Loach and the Dardennes fall short — but not quite as far as novelist Emmanuel Carrère, in his first directorial outing in 15 years.
Juliette Binoche is typically excellent as the campaigning writer who believes she can only understand a subject by experiencing it for herself. However, she can only sample breadline struggle, rather than live it, because she is insulated from the bitterest of realities with her ability to quit and return to her privileged routine in the capital. And this is where Carrère's feature fails, as he should have stuck with the content of Florence Aubenas' source book, The Night Cleaner, rather than focusing on the undercover journalism behind it.
Marianne's bid to keep her identity secret hardly makes for a gripping undercover thriller. Yet Carrère persists in keeping her the focus of the grittily filmed but suspense-free action, when Hélène Lambert's hard-pressed mother of three or Dominique Pupin's lonely write-off are much more interesting and empathetic characters. Indeed, as non-professionals, their re-enactment of everyday reality is much harder-hitting than jerky-cam footage of Binoche scrubbing cabin toilets on the Ouistreham ferry. Carrère flirts with the ethics of embedded social-justice investigations that risk exploiting those whose cause is being advocated. But such lip-service only reinforces the realisation that this is a film that, for all its sincerity, completely misses its own point.