Directed by Valérie Donzelli, At Work offers a calm, precise, and deliberately anti-melodramatic portrayal of one of the fundamental crises of contemporary life: the moment when creativity can no longer sustain living. Having previously screened at the Venice Film Festival, the film will continue its international journey with a presentation in New York as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a context that further consolidates its position among socially engaged and artistically driven works of French cinema.
The film follows Paul, a 42-year-old writer who, despite cultural recognition, finds himself in a precarious economic situation. Struggling to complete his third novel, he is pushed by financial pressure into a series of temporary and unstable jobs, work that drains not only his time but also his mental energy and capacity for creative focus. Rather than advancing a conventional narrative, the film concentrates on Paul’s lived condition:
a state in which labor, instead of serving as a means of self-realization, becomes a serious obstacle to creation.
Donzelli consciously avoids romanticizing the suffering of the artist. At Work neither sanctifies poverty nor turns crisis into a platform for heroism. What the film reveals instead is a quiet, gradual erosion, a crisis that unfolds without spectacle and slowly empties the character’s sense of identity, desire, and connection to the surrounding world. Failure here is neither sudden nor dramatic; it is ordinary, persistent, and deeply wearing.
Cinematically, the film remains faithful to a minimalist and tightly controlled language. The mise-en-scène is simple and everyday, often unfolding in enclosed or neutral spaces that intensify a sense of repetition, stasis, and suffocation. These locations are neither inspiring nor overtly threatening; they are vacant and drained, functioning as a direct reflection of the protagonist’s mental state. The camera frequently stays close to bodies and faces, avoiding expressive movement or overtly symbolic framing. This proximity does not create intimacy, but instead underscores the character’s inner isolation.
The rhythm of the film is slow and contemplative, with editing that deliberately resists dramatic acceleration. This slowness becomes an integral part of the viewing experience: the spectator is compelled to inhabit the same suspension and inertia that define the character’s existence. Bastien Bouillon’s performance aligns fully with this approach, restrained, precise, and built on subtraction. He avoids emotional outbursts and refuses to position the character as either victim or hero. Virginie Efira, in a supporting role, maintains the film’s emotional balance without functioning as a narrative solution.
At Work stands within the tradition of French social cinema, yet approaches it through an inward-looking and understated lens. More than a film about writing, it is about a condition experienced by many contemporary artists: living in the gap between aspiration and survival. Donzelli offers no clear answer and deliberately withholds any form of redemption or closure. The film poses a question with honesty and precision: when art can no longer sustain life, what remains of the artist’s identity?
At the same time, At Work can be read as part of Valérie Donzelli’s evolving cinematic trajectory. If Declaration of War placed the body, love, and survival at the center of its narrative through a deeply personal and emotional lens, and Notre Dame examined professional and social pressure with a lighter, occasionally humorous tone, At Work marks the point at which Donzelli returns directly to the concept of labor itself, not as a means of fulfillment, but as a corrosive force that suspends creativity. The film suggests that Donzelli’s cinema, without abandoning its human concerns, has gradually shifted from emotional expression toward a more structural and critical reflection on living in the contemporary world.
