A hard day's night in the glassworks

Every bully needs a victim. But does a victim sometimes crave a bully? The unexpected turn of this pathology is what makes writer-director Philippe Le Guay's tingling little French thriller, his third film, set mostly on the factory floor of a provincial glassworks, such a suspenseful exercise in sadomasochism. Or, as the workers in the place would say, "canteen culture".

Pierre (Gérald Laroche), a man with a 12-year-old son and an upwardly mobile wife, goes on the night shift to earn a few francs more. Shy and slightly undersized, he's the runt in the robust but generally good-hearted gang of factory-floor workers who, Loach-like, kid each other with locker-room bawdiness but come together around the supper table - all except Fred (Marc BarbÈ), a lanky, well-built loner with a broken marriage. Almost instantly, Fred deflects his low self-esteem on to the newcomer with a simple jape: the start of a process of persecution and mental attrition.

Like last year's thriller, Harry: He's Here to Help, the threat settles on the innocent Pierre completely out of the blue - or, rather, against the fiery haze of molten glass that gives the relationship a palpable sense of danger and dread. But it's not that simple. Pushed by taunt and humiliation to fight back, Pierre instead turns the other cheek - and writes out a cheque for his tormentor's peace of mind. "You should have been a priest," is the short-lived thanks he gets, while his son, rallying to his dad's defence, unexpectedly finds himself in macho complicity with the stronger man. It's the push-coming-to-shove dynamic of the grown-ups' ambiguous relationship - perhaps homoerotic, perhaps not - that keeps you on edge, wondering which man will survive and at what cost to home, dignity or even sanity.

Le Guay's cast of co-workers, roughlooking men, good with their hands, have quick French tongues that lend intelligence to their actions. But they stand apart as observers of this primitive test of masculinity, or, in a scene Jean Renoir would have saluted, close around Pierre in a show of group solidarity. Their simple drifting into song after lending him a hand to build his new house in the suburbs is a very fine moment. But it's the tenderest in a movie of intense psychological and physical pain. A real treat.

Night Shift
Cert: cert15