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Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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The Human Resources Manager (Film)

by Annette Basile | May 02, 2011 13:01 | Edited May 02, 2011 13:02

Deftly steering between politics, poignancy and dark humour, this absorbing road movie is also one that proves morally interesting.

The Human Resources Manager - it's hardly an enticing title. And the synopsis gives the impression that this is potentially dry and depressing: an HR manager escorts the body of a foreign worker killed in a suicide blast back to her East European home. The title and plot outline do the film no favours, but this is hardly dry and depressing. Instead, it's tremendously enjoyable and often very, very funny.

 

Deftly steering between politics, poignancy and black humour, Israeli director Eran Riklis (Lemon Tree, The Syrian Bride) has delivered a faultless work. While some of the lines and situations are darkly amusing, Riklis never loses respect for the person at the centre of this story - Yulia, the only character here with a name. We never actually meet her, but we do get to know her. A worker at a huge Jerusalem bakery, she is already dead when the film begins - killed by a bomb in the marketplace. She'd been having a liaison with a married night shift supervisor, who fired her without informing upper management. Lying in the morgue, unclaimed and unidentified, she's traced back to the bakery, who are deemed heartless for not noticing her absence. They're getting bad press, and the boss (known only as "the widow") leaves it to the HR manager (Mark Ivanir from Schindler's List in a finely observed performance) to deal with the mess.

 

From here, the film becomes incredibly absorbing and extremely interesting on a moral level. An unhappy man with family problems, the HR manager is thrown into a situation not of his making, and as he takes Yulia's body home - accompanied by well-fashioned, quirky-free secondary characters - his heart and soul reawaken.

 

Essentially a road movie, and beautifully shot on location in Jerusalem and Romania, The Human Resources Manager is deeply satisfying. Don't let the title put you off...