Ines (Jasmina Douieb), a seventeen year veteran of a small Paris firm that sells industrial cleaning supplies, has more than had it with her co-workers. A brash, boorish and male lot, their attitudes towards her in the office are the stuff of a Human Resources administrator’s nightmares – sexist comments, rude jokes and assigning her certain task such as cleaning the office just because she is a women is the order of the day. Even with all the abuse she suffers, Ines is still somewhat aghast when she accidentally triggers a series of events that ultimately leaves her boss Patrick dead. But as she tries to cover up the death, she finds that she is more than willing to make the next death of a coworker not so accidental.
Co-writer and director Véronique Jadin has turned in a delightfully sharp and at times vicious satire in Employee Of The Month. To be sure this is most likely wish-fulfillment for any number of women who work in a testosterone-drenched office environment. But even the other woman in Ines’s office turns a deaf ear to her complaints, a criticism of how the competitive nature of capitalism can play against people’s best interests. Jadin gets the most of the film’s rather contained office/warehouse space both visually and in terms of story. As things threaten to spiral more and more out of control, Ines, with the aid of reluctant new intern Melody, scrambles to cover her tracks in a frenetic fashion that suggests Mike Judge’s Office Space by way of some of the dark farce of the Coen Brothers like Fargo. Jadin manages to balance the story’s grander comic bits with its critique of corporate culture deftly, keeping the audience laughing and cheering Ines and Melody on in the face of what they are doing. The men in the office deserve what they get and we want Ines and Melody to get away with it even when it looks like they might not.
To be sure, the drastic pandemic-driven move to work-from-home for a majority of office workers threatens to make this film seem like a period piece. But the often times ugly nature of office politics and culture are not so small in our rearview mirror that this movie won’t resonate with many who have labored away in cube farms large or small. And unfortunately, if and when employers require their workers back all under one roof, it most likely will feel all too familiar again.
