It's been 19 years - since Michael Moore's award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11 - since a documentary once again had the honor of competing for the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2023. It's back with a vengeance with Jeunesse (Le Printemps), the first part of a triptych - announced to last 9 hours - by Wang Bing.
From 2014 to 2019, the seasoned Chinese filmmaker set up his camera in the manufacturing town of Zhili, some 100 kilometers from Shanghai. With a free hand (long-term filming was authorized by the management on condition that it did not disturb the production), he films these young people, boys and girls, who have escaped from their rural province in the hope of a better life.
The reality is that they mass-produce polyester dresses and viscose jogging suits - a subject already tackled in his previous documentary Argent Amer (2016). It's hard not to be reminded of the human and ecological heresy of fast fashion, even if most of the clothes produced here are destined for the Chinese market.
For a better life? Without filter or artifice, Wang Bing lifts the veil on the harsh reality of this labor, the long days and repetitive gestures at the designated station, the constant noise of the sewing machines and the employer's pressure on these interchangeable, piece-rate workers, for whom taking a few days off is unthinkable, and injuring a hand means being replaced within the hour. The clock ticking and the mountains of fabric that don't diminish; high-speed sewing that's even more striking when the image is accelerated in editing, making the nimble little hands work even faster.
And then, of course, there's the communal life, in the workshops or upstairs, in the cramped dormitories that allow no privacy. Raw capitalism, endured from mother to daughter, from mother to son, filmed as it is experienced in long still or hand-held shots. And yet, through this multitude of portraits, some of which, by their sheer number, are only just touched upon, there are real moments of joy, hope and even love, throughout these three and a half hours, which, it must be admitted, still make themselves felt.
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