At Work

Valérie Donzelli’s At Work (À pied d’œuvre), adapted from Franck Courtés’s novel of the same name, follows Paul Marquet (Bastien Bouillon), a 42-year-old novelist attempting a third, potentially lucrative book. Unlike the typical starving artist trope, Paul is anchored to the responsibilities and demands of adulthood: an ex-wife, two grown children, and the weight of a previously successful career. It is an idea that could have been fertile ground for exploring the precarious balance between the pursuit of art and obligation in late-stage capitalism – but the execution falters.

Much of the film is essentially a one-man show. Bouillon shoulders almost the entirety of the screen time, yet his performance never conveys the urgency or complexity that the role demands. The struggles of a man attempting to reconcile past success with present instability should be emotionally charged, but Bouillon’s portrayal simply feels muted. His Paul is endlessly fumbling, yet rarely affecting; the audience is left with sympathy in theory rather than in practice.

Donzelli’s direction is visually competent but tonally uncertain. Paul’s modest studio apartment in the Parisian suburbs, the odd jobs he takes to keep afloat – from putting together a mezzanine to potting trees on a balcony – are meticulously documented, yet they feel like an endless catalogue of minor inconveniences rather than a meaningful portrait of struggle. Additionally, the narrative seems more obsessed with the mechanics of creativity than the very human stakes surrounding it. At its core, Courtes’s novel tells a story about class, economic precarity, the privileges and sacrifices involved in pursuing art, and even the subtle pressures of ageism. Yet the film rarely engages with these realities, instead lingering on Paul’s literary obsessions, which increasingly feel self-indulgent.

At Work is not without ambition, but it drifts, more intent on cataloguing the minutiae of a writer’s life than probing the pressures of a precarious, class-bound existence. By the end, it is less a portrait of struggle than an indulgent episode of artistic self-absorption.

Christina Yang

At Work does not have a release date yet.

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