Employee of the Month  ★★★

FRENCH comedies are hit-and-miss affairs.

I have thoroughly enjoyed some, but others that have come highly-credentialled  left me largely non-plussed.

Employee of the Month mostly sits in the first category, delivering plenty of laughs due mainly to writer, director and lead actor Jérôme Commandeur.

It’s still a typical French comedy of manners, but approached in a broad comic way that makes it more accessible to the average audience.

Commandeur is Vincent, a career civil servant who thinks he has a cushy job for life. He is feted by a young woman and her mother who, like many in French society, revere the position and standing that civil service provides.

Vincent himself isn’t above justifying the regular acceptance of small gifts of gratitude from members of the public. Life is pretty sweet until a senior Minister, played with great relish by veteran Gerard Damon, decides to make employment cuts.

Of course, in typical fashion the cuts mostly amount to transferring people into other unpalatable positions and postings that will eventually lead to more politically palatable resignations rather than sackings.

In one of the film’s best scenes, most of the staff in Vincent’s division find themselves spared from transfer but Vincent is one of the unlucky ones.

Isabelle (Pascale Arbillot) is in charge of achieving the overall reduction in employee numbers and becomes more and more frustrated by Vincent’s repeated refusals to take a redundancy payment despite the far-flung and mundane posts he is given, including Antarctica and the jungles of Central America.

At less than 90 minutes, the film doesn’t outstay its welcome and delivers quite a few laugh-out-loud moments with Commandeur always at the centre of the best of them.

I definitely feel a future US remake in the offing.