Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Julie (Marina Fois) are separating after ten years together. However, both will find themselves in the emergency room, because Raf fractured her arm following a trivial fall on the street.
Yann (Pio Marmai) is a truck driver, who participates in the protests of the yellow vests. He is in the hospital because he was injured in the leg during the violent clashes with the police.
The three find themselves in an overcrowded emergency room, where Kim (Aissatou Diallo Sagna) works as a nurse. The hospital hosts a variegated and suffering humanity, more or less patient waiting to be assisted, while outside the scuffles between demonstrators and riot officers continue.
In the film, light moments alternate with other dramatic ones. Clear elements of social protest emerge from the latter.
There are several fractures represented in the film: the one that is separating the Raf-Julie couple, the fracture of Raf's arm, those that are stirring in the French social body.
The issues Catherine Corsini focuses on are not those relating to the coexistence of different cultures or homophobia, but concern the distance between the state and the citizens whose interest she should pursue.
An abysmal distance, destined to fuel the movement of the yellow vests, which includes Yann, a young truck driver forced to still live with his mother, due to starvation wages.
If Yann belongs to the working class, Raf and Julie's bourgeois world isn't faring much better either. The latter runs a small publishing house in the world of comics, for which she works as a designer Raf, but things are no longer going as well as they used to be.
Kim is a black nurse forced into grueling shifts, which go far beyond what is theoretically permitted by the employment contract.
The hospital itself is dilapidated, with false ceilings falling on patients, a staff that has to jump through hoops to guarantee a minimum of service, also having to deal with a structural shortage of drugs and equipment.
What is missing is certainly not the will of the operators, but the resources invested in the public service.
And the initial distrust, also due to the class difference between Yann on the one hand, and Raf and Julie on the other, dissolves in the face of the dramatic events that the three have to face in the emergency room, also caused by the wild and irrational repression of the movements. Of protest by the police.
Events whose impact is mitigated by the profound humanity of most of the health workers, Kim in the lead. But in the real world, no one can work miracles ... in this film Corsini tries to represent with realism the tragic events linked to the manifestations of the "yellow vests", but using the point of view of characters who live these experiences from a particular angle, which lends itself to creating situations in which there is also space for humor.
Characters sometimes too over the top, as in the case of Yann, but which allow the director to show what happened without falling into the trap of didacticism, excessive trivialization or stereotypes of politics.
Characters who find themselves overwhelmed by events much larger than themselves, who find the only way to salvation in the rediscovery of their most deeply human dimension, destined to make any difference in class, gender and skin color irrelevant.
Yann (Pio Marmai) is a truck driver, who participates in the protests of the yellow vests. He is in the hospital because he was injured in the leg during the violent clashes with the police.
The three find themselves in an overcrowded emergency room, where Kim (Aissatou Diallo Sagna) works as a nurse. The hospital hosts a variegated and suffering humanity, more or less patient waiting to be assisted, while outside the scuffles between demonstrators and riot officers continue.
In the film, light moments alternate with other dramatic ones. Clear elements of social protest emerge from the latter.
There are several fractures represented in the film: the one that is separating the Raf-Julie couple, the fracture of Raf's arm, those that are stirring in the French social body.
The issues Catherine Corsini focuses on are not those relating to the coexistence of different cultures or homophobia, but concern the distance between the state and the citizens whose interest she should pursue.
An abysmal distance, destined to fuel the movement of the yellow vests, which includes Yann, a young truck driver forced to still live with his mother, due to starvation wages.
If Yann belongs to the working class, Raf and Julie's bourgeois world isn't faring much better either. The latter runs a small publishing house in the world of comics, for which she works as a designer Raf, but things are no longer going as well as they used to be.
Kim is a black nurse forced into grueling shifts, which go far beyond what is theoretically permitted by the employment contract.
The hospital itself is dilapidated, with false ceilings falling on patients, a staff that has to jump through hoops to guarantee a minimum of service, also having to deal with a structural shortage of drugs and equipment.
What is missing is certainly not the will of the operators, but the resources invested in the public service.
And the initial distrust, also due to the class difference between Yann on the one hand, and Raf and Julie on the other, dissolves in the face of the dramatic events that the three have to face in the emergency room, also caused by the wild and irrational repression of the movements. Of protest by the police.
Events whose impact is mitigated by the profound humanity of most of the health workers, Kim in the lead. But in the real world, no one can work miracles ... in this film Corsini tries to represent with realism the tragic events linked to the manifestations of the "yellow vests", but using the point of view of characters who live these experiences from a particular angle, which lends itself to creating situations in which there is also space for humor.
Characters sometimes too over the top, as in the case of Yann, but which allow the director to show what happened without falling into the trap of didacticism, excessive trivialization or stereotypes of politics.
Characters who find themselves overwhelmed by events much larger than themselves, who find the only way to salvation in the rediscovery of their most deeply human dimension, destined to make any difference in class, gender and skin color irrelevant.
