‘Elle est où, ta place?’ The Social-Realist Melodramas of Laurent Cantet:

Abstract

This article analyses the social-realist melodramas of director Laurent Cantet: Ressources humaines (2000) and Emploi du temps (2001). It considers the socio-political subject matter of the two films in relation to so-called New Realism and the ‘return of the political’ in French cinema since the mid-1990s. The article also examines Cantet’s use of melodrama – the function of mise-en-scène, emphasis on the family as the site of wider social crisis, and the director’s apparent pre-occupation with father–son relationships – as a means of articulating the affects/effects of broader social and political forces on the individual. Finally, the article considers how Cantet’s social melodramas are intricately bound to the theme of masculinity in crisis, through the relationship of the white, middle-class, male bodies of the central protagonists to the various spaces – physical, social, economic – that they occupy during the film.