Thierry has been unemployed since they closed down the company where he worked as a manual labourer. Over the course of twenty months he listened to all kinds of advice, paid for several requalification courses and went for a series of interviews – all to no avail. He has no intention of relying on state handouts like some of his former co-workers; he wants to get back into a job so he can provide for his wife and disabled son. Most of all, he doesn’t want to be part of that stratum of society that feels inferior to everyone else. In the end he manages to find work as a security guard in a shopping mall. All he has to do is watch, observe and monitor what’s going on. But he’s gone through too much humiliation himself to want to subject others to the same degradation. Faced with a pensioner he catches stealing a pack of meat, he stutters out the stock phrases he’s had to memorise, but it plays on his conscience. Is it really the measure of a man to submit to the law of the market? Vincent Lindon, the only professional actor in this uncompromising social drama, took Best Actor at the recent Cannes festival.