Built for nerve-wracking speed, the French import “Full Time” is scored musically like a Luc Besson thriller from the mid-’80s, jacking up the tension with synthesizer beats suggesting the heroine is headed for a run-in with hordes of assassins.
But no. The enemy in this ground-level, working-class thriller is time, with an assist from relentless labor practices; a crippling series of Parisian strikes messing up everyone’s commutes; and the challenges of child care for working parents trying to hang onto their job as well as their sanity. If you thought Season 1 of “The Bear” was tense, “Full Time” makes “The Bear” look like “March of the Penguins.”
Writer-director Eric Gravel’s week-in-the-life exercise in suspense begins with darkness and the sound of a woman, breathing, as if she’d just run a marathon. In truth she’s asleep, about to be awakened by her cellphone alarm, for another day of just-in-time management.
