Review: 'Between Two Worlds' finds strong drama in the hardships of French women laboring at minimum wage

Director Emmanuel Carrére’s gritty drama “Between Two Worlds” is on the same mission as Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” — to let viewers catch a glimpse of a struggling working class on whose labor, and invisibility, an entire economy is built.

If Carrére doesn’t succeed to the degree that Zhao did, it’s largely because of how differently the movies go about what they do.

In “Nomadland,” the lives of people living in their vehicles and traveling from one seasonal job to another — harvesting sweet potatoes one month, routing Amazon packages the next — worked in large part because star Frances McDormand portrayed and embodied someone on the inside of this system.

In “Between Two Worlds” — which, like “Nomadland,” is based on a nonfiction book (in this case, Florence Aubenas’ 2011 book “Le Quai de Ouistreham”) — this world of French laborers is seen from the outside. Juliette Binoche plays Marianne Winckler, who we first meet as just another person looking for work in Caen, the city on France’s north coast. She follows some other would-be workers, and quickly tags along with some women working on cleaning crews. 

The hardest gig, but also the most lucrative, is on the team that cleans the passenger ferry that goes between Caen’s port, Ouistreham, to Portsmouth, England. The team must clean bathrooms and make beds in 230 rooms during the ferry’s 90-mintue stopover, before passengers board to cross the English Channel.

Before landing the job, though, a caseworker at the employment office takes Marianne aside and asks what she’s doing there. The caseworker, Lucie (Aude Ruyter), recognizes Marianne, not as a day laborer but as a successful author. Marianne tells the caseworker that she’s gone undercover, so she can understand the “employment crisis” by living it. Lucie doesn’t rat her out, but admonishes her that “the people who come here can’t stop when they’re bored.”

That fear of being found out, and the guilt that she’s doing some kind of “poverty chic” act, is what drives Marianne and the movie’s narrative for much of the way. Fortunately, that less-than-interesting plot is pushed aside for the more intriguing stories of the women Marianne meets — including Marilou (Léa Carne), who dreams of leaving Caen with her boyfriend someday; Cédric (Didier Pupin), an older man who’s a hopeless romantic; and most especially Chrystèle (Hélène Lambert), a foul-mouthed single mom who soon becomes Marianne’s best friend on the job.

Carrére, co-writing the script with Hélène Devynck, spends too much time and attention concerned about whether Marianne’s cover will be blown. But when the focus is on the women she works with — all played by nonprofessional actors — the movie rises to another level, focusing on the daily struggles and momentary triumphs of these workers who don’t have the luxury of zipping back to Paris when the job is done.

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‘Between Two Worlds’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language. Running time: 106 minutes; in French, with subtitles.