Sometimes the only way to keep going is to keep going.
Full Time is a pressure cooker of a film, a movie that shows a woman simply trying to perform the tasks of daily life as circumstances make that more and more and more and more difficult.
Julie lives with her two children in a town outside of Paris, and she has to commute into the city to her job as head chambermaid at a five-star hotel. She has to leave her children with a neighbor when she goes to work, but her son is particularly rambunctious and has the sitter at wit’s end, and Julie keeps getting home later and later and the neighbor is fed up.
Complicating all of that is that there’s a transportation strike going on in Paris. Early on, we see Julie rushing to squeeze through the doors of a train so she can get to work, but then the trains stop running. She then has to make mad dashes to the buses that have replaced the train routes, but then there are no more buses. She negotiates her way into using a hotel taxi, but then the taxi drivers go on strike, too. Each option Julie has is methodically eliminated, as she still has to figure out how get to work, shop for food, and get home to her children, all while being essentially broke.
The movie is put together like a propulsive thriller, with quick cuts and driving synth music that compound the tension to an almost unbearable degree. Julie can only exist in this moment, because to try to do otherwise would cause her to explode. If she stops—to panic, to second guess, to really feel much of anything—that would be the end of it all.
Full Time is a masterful depiction of a woman just on the edge, doing everything she possibly can just to get to the next thing to do. We wonder throughout if she’ll ever find the valve to release all the pressure, but you may be surprised by the wave of emotion that hits when we finally get to where we’re going.
Full Time is on VOD.
