There are two kinds of French cinema competing at the Cannes Film Festival this year. One revolves around the intellectualized tales of frustrated love that French directors never seem to tire of, while the other tackles the socio-economic woes gnawing at a country riddled with hardship, joblessness, and self-doubt. With Belgian and British gritty social dramas conspicuously absent from the competition, it’s worth noting, France is doing much of the heavy lifting in this domain.

Standing Tall, the festival’s curtain raiser, charts the turbulent adolescence of a juvenile delinquent shuffled between social agencies. For all its foul-mouthed gloom, Emmanuelle Bercot’s film carries a positive message: It’s a celebration of French institutions and their attempts to rescue the drifting progeny of broken families. But it’s harder to find redeeming features in Stéphane Brizé’s searing The Measure of a Man, which drew earnest applause at its screening on Monday.

Mehdi Chebil / France 24 / The Atlantic

The Measure of a Man is the first competition entry by the Breton director. Like much of his previous work, it’s a candid, searching study of society seen through the eyes of “small folk”—in this case, a 50-something mechanic on the dole. Audiences meet Thierry, played by Vincent Lindon, at his employment agency in an undisclosed location. He’s recently gone through five months of training to be a crane operator. It was the agency’s idea, but his counselor now tells him it was a waste of time. The counselor is neither mean nor particularly unhelpful; it’s the system that’s failing Thierry.

This impasse is a recurrent theme throughout the movie. Thierry is trapped in a system that exploits and misleads him, while constantly putting him down. His banker prods him to sell his only possessions in order to avoid bankruptcy, but then urges him to put more money into a life-insurance policy. In a Skype interview, an employer asks him whether he’s prepared to accept potential demotions and lower pay, only to then rule out Thierry’s chances and criticize his resume.