The Measure of a Man

If the art of listening is the key to good acting, then Vincent Lindon’s performance in The Measure of a Man is a masterclass. He plays Thierry Taugourdeau, a longtime factory worker now seeking employment having been laid off in a round of redundancies some 20 months prior. For much of Stéphane Brizé’s quietly engrossing character study, all he can do is sit and listen as a variety of people explain why his chances of finding a job are so limited.

In the opening scene, we find him in an employment centre trying in vain to understand why the course he spent four months training on is useless because nobody informed him of an additional qualification that was required to land a job. All Thierry wants is to go back to work and provide for his family, but he’s trapped in a system that keeps shifting the goalposts.

Read the rest of my review at Little White Lies.