French writer-director Stéphane Brizé's The Measure of a Man (La loi du marché), looks at first to be a character study with a quasi-documentary feel, then takes a disconcerting turn. At its centre is Vincent Lindon (Welcome [2009], Mademoiselle Chambon [2009]), a robust, often demonstrative actor who is also capable of surprising restraint. In The Measure of a Man, for which he won best actor at Cannes in 2015, he gives a subdued, beautifully judged depiction of a middle-aged man grappling with a situation that seems designed to reinforce in him a sense of defeat.

This is Lindon's third film with Brizé. In The Measure of a Man, his character, Thierry, is in his early fifties and worked as a machine tools operator. He has been made redundant, and after almost a year of unemployment inducted into a bureaucratic system that appears to be supportive, but is gradually wearing him down by submitting him to a series of demoralising ordeals. Lindon plays him with a downcast gaze and a kind of stoic determination in the face of the obstacles and obligations imposed on him.