Que ta joie demeure

Director Denis Côté dubs his essayistic film "an open-ended exploration of the energies and rituals of various workplaces." It captures the work and leisure activities of various employees, whom the director shows engaged in both varied and monotonous tasks. Whether a case of machining parts or "constructing" thoughts, he reveals things to us in the process, in much the same way the film itself is a recognized intellectual process. This isn't a purely observational documentary in that it includes many of the filmmaker's choices. From time to time Côté poses his protagonists (in a raw stylization reminiscent of Ulrich Seidl), elsewhere he intentionally suppresses their discourse. The director finds little deficiency in the tasks he films, and with a similar precision he has constructed his cinematic meditation on the means of achieving fulfillment in life, a fundamental part of which, of course, is work. And his observation of it here is infused with the same inner tension as any intellectual contemplation. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)