What is real, what is true?
Who are you really?
And can it be that one has to lie in order to tell the truth?
Whether it's because of the fear of fake news, Instagram filters, or simply because this question is always pretty central to fiction: right now, a lot of films are about what you can believe and which identities can be considered real.
Of course, nothing is true in feature films themselves anyway.
Identities are rather withdrawn there than revealed.
But maybe that's why they are such a good medium to think about what endangers this authenticity, what it is or could be.
Do you need them at all?
And if so, at what price.
An early film scene in Emmanuel Carrère's Like in Real Life shows the main character Marianne (Juliette Binoche) at a job fair in Caen, northern France.
She is asked what her greatest weaknesses and strengths are, and she gives the perfect answers that the employee at the employment agency advised her to use: she is dynamic, cheerful and a team player.
Maybe a little too perfectionist.
And ambitious.
She wants to work for the best in the industry.
That doesn't sound bad, they tell her: maybe – mind you: maybe – they'll call her back.
It's about a job as a cleaner.
"It's a competitive sector, it's the future." Marianne then asks Cédric (Didier Pupin), whom she also meets at the job fair, what he calls his strengths and weaknesses.
"La franchise", "honesty", is his answer to both questions.
Marianne says: "Hm, me and honesty - that's not such an easy thing." She sometimes lies.
At some point, however, she always tells the truth.
"Then it's not a lie," says Cédric.
The journalist's secret
The scene is one of many foreshadowings of Marianne's secret.
She is actually looking for a job in Caen, lives in a small, sparse room and only has contacts with the people she meets through looking for work.
The story of her husband, whose bookkeeping she did and who one day let the neighbor move in with him, so that Marianne had to leave her village and is now without a house, without money and without official work experience, is, however, fabricated.
In fact, Marianne Winckler is a book author and journalist, an investigative reporter who plays a role in covering working conditions in the low-wage sector – just like Florence Aubenas, on whose book Le quai de Ouistreham the film is based.
Marianne finds work and loses it again.
"Don't contradict people who are smarter than you!" she is retorted when she names unfair treatment.
The challenge, you understand with her, is not the willingness to work as a cleaning lady, it is the lack of time at work and the contempt of the superiors.
Then she starts to work in the cleaning team of the ferry that docks daily at the Quai de Ouistreham.
The work is hard, physically the hardest so far: there is only an hour and a half between the moment the passengers disembark and the arrival of the next passenger.
contempt for superiors
That's four minutes per cabin to freshly cover the bunk beds and clean the floor, bathroom and toilet.
Marianne wonders why the travelers don't even flush the toilets, but leave it up to them.
That's just to annoy her, replies her colleague.