Antoine has agreed to follow a writing workshop where some young people in insertion must write a black novel with the help of Olivia, a recognized novelist. The work of writing will bring to life the working-class past of the city. Its shipyard is closed for 25 years, a nostalgia that does not interest Antoine, influenced by the anxiety of the present world.
The Workshop is still, and then jumps... to what Laurent Cantet is more interested in: how it confronts and articulates society, particularly the French. [Full review in Spanish]
The leads are excellent...anchoring Cantet's sincere, complex mixture of discourse and voyeurism, as if the undiluted teacher/student naturalism of his 2008 film "The Class" had fermented into something more volatile.
The Workshop would like us to feel like we watched something meaningful about a lot of different things, when in fact it tabled all the elements of meaning, set some of them rolling, but didn't follow through.
The value of the film is that it speaks of so many things without ever losing the flow of the story or complicating the collective motives... [Full Review in Spanish]
[Director] Laurent Cantet escapes from the social theme of his laureate The Class to get into the terrain of suspense, although The Workshop is still just as effective... [Full review in Spanish]