In 'At Work', Bouillon charms in a predictable look at a struggling novelist - review

Fewer than 5% of fiction writers make a living from their writing, a statistic that seems to shock Paul (Bastien Bouillon), the hero of the new French movie At Work, directed by Valérie Donzelli, which opens in theaters throughout Israel on Thursday.

There is little to surprise anyone familiar with the business of writing and publishing in this movie, and how much you enjoy it will depend on how charmed you are by the performance of Bouillon, an appealing actor who has starred in such films as The Count of Monte Cristo and Leave One Day, as Paul.

Paul is obstinate and maddening, or single-minded and noble, depending on how you see it, as he devotes himself to a floundering writing career that devolves into a struggle for financial survival. Paul, who once ran a successful photography business, gave it up a few years ago to devote himself to writing novels.

He has published several books, all of which were critically acclaimed but none of which sold well. Now his editor (Virginie Ledoyen), whose patience is wearing thin, isn't happy with what she's read of his latest book, a memoir about his failed marriage. He has already spent his advance, and she won’t give him any more money.

His career isn’t his only problem. His ex-wife (played by director Donzelli) has just moved to Montreal with their teen children, and apparently, she has a career that helped support him in his writing. Now he must make a living on only a couple of hundred euros a month in royalties.

He rejects his father’s suggestion that he reopen his photography studio; instead, he looks for a part-time job so he can continue writing.

This leads him into the gig economy, and soon he works as a handyman on a site called Jobbers, where desperate people looking for work try to underbid each other, and he takes on difficult, time-consuming jobs for just 18 or 20 euros. Lonely and dehumanized by this grind, he keeps trying to write.

Paul seems to hold grudges against father, wife who left him

All this might have seemed a bit more engaging if it were clearer what drove him to write. He seems to hold obscure grudges against his unsupportive father and the wife who moved away with his kids, but that alone doesn't explain why he walked away from a successful middle-class life, or why he sticks with writing when he doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say.

As I watched, I kept wondering whether the world needed another book about a mean dad or a failed marriage, which is the last thing I imagine the director wanted me to think. Eventually, though, he finds his voice by writing about the humiliations of the gig economy, a subject that is apparently fresh and alluring to the French reading public.

I had a few thoughts on how the French publishing world differs from the American one as I watched, which I know something about. In America, even one book that doesn’t sell well is generally enough to get an author dropped by their publisher, and editors often barely know the writers, let alone meet with them to discuss their progress.

For example, a friend of mine writing her second book has never met her editor; when she asked the editor if they could have coffee, the editor refused, even though they live about five minutes away from each other.

Another friend in New York tried to deliver a finished manuscript to his editor in person a couple of years ago, and the editor’s assistant wouldn't even let him say hello. So when Paul drops off a bundle of handwritten notebooks and his editor has an assistant type it all up so she can read it, I kept thinking how lucky he was – which, again, was probably not what I was meant to think.

Film part of French literary movie tradition 

At Work is part of a tradition of French literary movies which are fun if you can find them.

A few of the best are Lost Illusions, an adaptation of the classic Honoré de Balzac novel about an aspiring writer in Paris; Sagan, a biopic about popular novelist Françoise Sagan, who did make a very good living from her fiction; Like a Turtle on Its Back, a comedy about a blocked writer and his supportive wife; and Promise At Dawn, a portrait of the writer Romain Gary and his ambitious mother.