He has gone to college and now has returned to their small French town as a trainee in the personnel division. The night before his first job interview, his father fearfully briefs him to respect his boss and to play down his own opinion. The father's spirit has long since been broken down into timid subservience. Human Resources, written and directed by Laurent Cantet, follows the son during his first weeks on the job, gradually revealing itself as an angry and unforgiving look at the way factories can treat employees as machines and sometimes scrap them. More class-conscious than an American film would be, it shows the son torn between tempting management opportunities and his sense of fairness.
Humans are simply an element in a production flow chart.
Management is thinking of scaling back. She chairs an angry meeting, but her very anger discredits her, and her warnings aren't heeded. Then Frank, poking around on his boss' computer, discovers that his questionnaire has been used as a rationale for layoffs, and his dad will be one of those to be fired. The film is not really driven by specific plot elements. It's not so much about what management does and how the workers fight back as it is about feelings.