In “Between Two Worlds,” Juliette Binoche plays Marianne Winckler, a woman struggling to make ends meet in the Normandy region of France. When she arrives at an unemployment center at the start of the film, she’s sheepish and bewildered, selling herself as a “team player” to secure a minimum wage gig.
In a voice-over, the details of her quest for steady work are articulated in a matter-of-fact tone. Subtly, the director Emmanuel Carrère reveals this social-justice drama’s real stakes: Marianne, an investigative journalist, has gone undercover. Her mission? To reveal the ways in which low-income workers are exploited — specifically women working graveyard shifts while under contract to private sanitation companies.
The film is a loose adaptation of “The Night Cleaner” (2010), the nonfiction best seller by Florence Aubenas, a French journalist who went underground and lived a double life as a cleaner for an English Channel ferry.
“Between Two Worlds,” written by Carrère and Hélène Devynck, departs from its source material with a fictional arc: Marianne, a savior figure driven to expose the system’s injustices, is also guilt-ridden about keeping her true identity a secret from her co-workers like Christèle (Hélène Lambert), an edgy single mother. This rift is echoed in the casting, with the usually glamorous Binoche acting alongside nonprofessional actors.
Carrère — known primarily in Europe as a writer of nonfiction books with a literary twist — applies a mood of cool journalistic sobriety to Marianne’s scandalous discoveries. At her worst job, for instance, she’s forced to prepare over 100 beds in less than two hours. Less compelling is the sentimental crisis that plays out because of Marianne’s deception. It does little else beyond remind us that advocacy work is too often in a tango with a bad case of main-character syndrome.
Between Two Worlds
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.
