Footnotes (2016)

FOOTNOTES  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Paul Calori, Kostia Testut
    Pauline Etienne, Olivier Chantreau, Francois Morel.
    Loïc Corbery, Julie Victor, Clémentine Yelnik,
    Vladimir Granov, Elodie Escarmelle, Eve Hanus
A French blue-collar musical about some women who revolt when they learn their jobs in a shoe factory are about to be outsourced to China. The filmmakers do nothing to romanticize working-class life. The women look like factory workers. You wouldn't mistake any of them for a fashion model or a movie star. Their surroundings are dreary and the work they do is monotonous. Their jobs are visibly using them up. But the alternative - unemployment or temporary, part-time, dead-end "mcjobs" - is worse. So you're not looking at "La La Land" here, even if the characters do occasionally break into song. "Footnotes" is definably less la la, and a whole lot more like life.