Early One Morning (2011)
"De bon matin" (original title)

Monday morning. Paul Wertret, 50, heads off to his job as a manager at the International Credit and Trade Bank. He arrives at 8 o'clock on the dot, as usual. He enters a meeting room, takes... See full summary »

Director:

Jean-Marc Moutout

Writers:

Jean-Marc Moutout (scenario), Olivier Gorce (adaptation),

Stars:

Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Valérie Dréville, Xavier Beauvois

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jean-Pierre Darroussin	...	Paul
Valérie Dréville	...	Françoise
Xavier Beauvois	...	Alain Fisher
Yannick Renier	...	Fabrice Van Listeich
Laurent Delbecque	...	Benoît
Ralph Amoussou	...	Youssef
Aladin Reibel	...	Antoine
Pierre Aussedat	...	Foucade
François Chattot	...	Lancelin
Nelly Antignac	...	Clarisse
Frédéric Leidgens	...	Docteur Hogard
Marion Denys	...	Annette
Richard Sammut	...	Roberto
Jean-François Pages	...	Eric
Marie Collins	...	Nadine

Storyline

Monday morning. Paul Wertret, 50, heads off to his job as a manager at the International Credit and Trade Bank. He arrives at 8 o'clock on the dot, as usual. He enters a meeting room, takes out a gun and kills two of his bosses. Then he locks himself in his office. As he waits for the inevitable police assault, this ordinary man looks back over his life and the events that led him to commit such an act.

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Plot Keywords:

gun | bank | boat | fired from the job | murder | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site [fr]

Country:

France Belgium

Language:

French

Release Date:

5 October 2011 (France)

Also Known As:

A primera hora

Filming Locations:

Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France

Box Office

Budget:

€3,746,500 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films du Losange, Need Productions, France 2 Cinéma

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

References Into the Wild (2007)

User Reviews

Raging, but without gain

It's a pity to have to consign this film to the two-star bin. Jean-Marc Moutout flashback drama is a solid, tonally consistent piece keeping its head just above the moral floodwaters of the global banking crisis. It's inability to achieve any sort of argument, bias or conclusion isn't a failure. The subject preaches to a converted audience. However it is unsatisfactory.

For example: for all Jean-Pierre Darroussin's restrained moral and professional outrage not enough melodrama breaks the surface. It's a good, focused performance but it doesn't point us anywhere. Paul has his feet on the ground, even in an act of dreadful violence (which made people laugh in the screening I attended, such is the incongruity of his clear-sighted actions). He isn't a Meursault, operating on a different consciousness.

The film is bookended with Beethoven - the funeral march of the seventh Symphony and then the same music in variations by Robert Schumann, epic music of the inevitability of mortality. This is what I took from the film - the fruitless struggle of a good man in the overwhelming grip of bad faith. Not easily digestible. 4/10