Life the Way It Is

The beautiful Agnès Tessier defies the world in which hard violence rules the roost. A tender and violent look at feminism, trade unions, urban misery, modern violence, loneliness and despair.

One fine day, Agnès Tessier decides to change her life. She leaves school to go and live with her friend Florence on the top floor of an apartment building in a slum district. She soon finds a job with a chemical company. When her colleague Muriel is sacked for not answering her boss’s advances, Agnès is so incensed she becomes the trade union representative. In doing so, she challenges a world ruled by violence, a world in which anyone can go crazy at any time. This film by Brisseau – his first on 16mm – was misunderstood and never released. It is a tender and violent work, a red film noir into which the era, the 1970s, is etched deeply. It is a film that reveals fury and provides an explosive view of the world. A crafted film, devoid of mannerisms. La vie comme ça offers a sharp and cutting picture of the economic crisis, feminism, trade unions, urban misery, modern violence, loneliness and despair. –IFFR