Marianne Winckler, a renowned writer, embarks on writing a book about precarious work. She moves near Caen and, without revealing her identity, joins a team of cleaning women. Confronted with economic fragility and social invisibility, she also discovers the mutual aid and solidarity that unite these shadow workers.
More than a punchy film about the underprivileged France, “Ouistreham”—or, as one might prefer its English title “Between Two Worlds”—primarily conveys the impossibility of concealing one’s social class, the semblance (to borrow the title from a novel by Philip K. Dick) of a universal fraternity.
This is also the film’s meta-narrative. Despite Juliette Binoche not wearing makeup, scrubbing toilets, and fully committing to her role, she cannot equally compete with the perfect naturalistic performance of the non-professional actors who, as the saying goes, fit the role…
It’s a pity that the seams of the screenplay are so visible—it’s hard to believe in the sequence of events on the ferry or the episode of the pendant with its overly obvious symbolism.
