Film Review : Temporaries (2023) | OUT OF FRAME
A Distant Land, A Distant Home
Richelieu, Temporaries’ (2023) alternative title for Canadian audiences, reflects the name of a city in Quebec. La Vallée-du-Richelieu, which doubled as both the film’s namesake and filming site, is a sprawling river valley plain, known for being home to great boating spots and several industrial hubs.
For most of us, Richelieu is a far-away land (who's even heard of it?) and understandably so, seeing as it’s approximately 14,628km away from Singapore. As for the Central American employees who form the majority of the industrial workforce in Richelieu, it’s marginally better—their homes in Guatemala City or Mexico City are only about 5000km away from the manufacturing plants where they spend their days. Yet, home feels just as, if not more distant.
The Harsh Realities of the Workplace
Temporaries captures the overlooked, and often untold stories of these seasonal foreign workers, while offering a refreshing twist on this issue. It’s portrayed from the perspective of a Guatemalan-American translator, Ariane. She and her colleagues act as liaisons between the Canadian manager, Stéphane, and the workers. It’s more complex than merely interpreting English into Spanish and vice versa—as a middleman, she has to make sure demands are met and conflicts are mediated. As tensions pile high, Ariane faces pressures from all around, and often finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place.
In fact, we start to see this within the first five minutes of the film, when a newly recruited worker, Mathieu, asks why they have to pay union fees, even when they’re not going to be represented by one. This time, she brushes him off. It’s not an option—you either pay it and get a job, or you don’t and go back home.
Yet, as Ariane familiarises herself more with her job and the people she serves, she becomes more aware of the wholly unjust working and living conditions that these seasonal workers are subject to.
Things escalate when Ariane gets fired from her job for resisting Stéphane, and the workers, now lacking representation, face even more dire issues.
From here, director Pier-Philippe Chevigny doesn’t entertain us with fairytale-like narratives—he and Ariane both know that there’s never a win-win situation for all parties when it comes to such issues. Someone will benefit, and someone will lose out—that’s just how the story goes.
A Cinematic Approach That Serves the Story
To bring out this narrative, Chevigny sets the stage with a boxy 3:4 ratio, which works in conjunction with long shots and grim lighting to create an atmosphere of anxiety. That being said, Temporaries succeeds more as a documentary or exposé than an exercise in cinematic style.
Chevigny and his cinematographer, Gabriel Brault-Tardif, focus primarily on advancing the narrative and take minimal creative liberties. Admittedly, the clunky exposition and repetitive dialogue at the start may feel didactic to some, but most of the wrinkles get smoothened out once the main conflict starts to take center stage.
Going into this film, one of my main concerns was that it’d fall into the common pitfall of the “saviour” trope. However, Chevigny frames the relations between Ariane and the workers authentically, taking care to develop the workers’ individual characters and paint them to be more than just subjects of exploitation and consequently, subjects to be rescued. Ariane experiences significant character development throughout the film as well, where her newfound friendships and cognizance of the issues her friends face become a catalyst for her own self-reflection and growth. I particularly enjoyed the candid snapshots of Ariane‘s interactions with the workers, where their camaraderie felt truly infectious.
Temporaries sheds light on issues that are prevalent in Quebec and beyond. It’s clear in its intention to advocate against systems, not people. Chevigny doesn’t want viewers to wholly blame people like Stéphane or Ariane’s indignant colleagues. Self-preservation is natural – everyone's trying to keep their jobs and stay alive. You can’t argue with that. Instead, Temporaries emphasises the need for individuals to have the courage to advocate for others, especially when nobody else can or will.
A movie filmed across the world, with the cast speaking French and Spanish—it doesn’t get any more foreign than that. Yet, Temporaries isn’t as much of a distant reality as it appears to be. Countless other countries, including here in Singapore, have had their fair share of controversies when it comes to the way we treat foreign workers, including calls to ban unsafe lorry transportation, ensure better living conditions and prevent exploitation. In this sense, Temporaries acts as an apt reflection of the issues we witness in our communities, and as a much-needed push to advocate more for them.
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ABOUT THE FILM CRITIC:
Jane is a student who loves all types of media and creative expression, including film. She especially has a soft spot in her heart for Asian cinema and films that make her bawl. Apart from lurking on Letterboxd, she loves crafting and collecting trinkets too!
