When writer-director Eric Gravel left Paris, moving to the countryside some two hours from the French capital, he was struck by just how many people commuted into the city. ‘Every day I saw the same faces on the train; some of my neighbours did it every day,’ he says. What he began to realise was just how dependent we are on these connections to run our lives. ‘If something goes wrong, everything can go very wrong,’ he adds. ‘I tried to find a story to tell about that.’ 

On the surface, the story of journeying to work might not sound that interesting. But in Full Time, Gravel has created a pulsating thriller, one that might compare to Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run for its nervy energy. It stars Call My Agent!’s Laure Calamy as Julie, a divorced mother-of-two. Working as a chambermaid in a top Parisian hotel, she tries to juggle the pressures of paying bills with the needs of her kids. Now all she wants is to get a job in marketing; if only she could make it to the interview with Paris riddled by transport strikes.

‘I’m a social filmmaker. I like social subjects. My main subject is our balance between work and our lives,’ says Gravel, whose 2017 debut Crash Test Aglaé dealt with the topic of outsourcing. He argues that most thrillers tend to circle around extreme situations which most of us never experience. ‘You’re kind of stressed for somebody who lives something that makes absolutely no sense. I thought I could use these feelings for something that makes sense for everybody. We are all anxious about stuff in our lives.’

When it came to casting Calamy, Gravel had never seen the comic hit Call My Agent! but was aware of her from films like Léa Mysius’ Ava and Dominik Moll’s Only The Animals. ‘When I proposed the role to Laure, she’d never had a lead at that time,’ he says. Here was a chance for her to not only play the main protagonist, but someone under great strain. ‘We’re going to see that this woman is not in the best part of her life,’ says Gravel. He felt Calamy fitted the character to a tee. ‘I can see her on a bus . . . but at the same time, I find she glows!’ 

Gravel, who won Best Director in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival when Full Time premiered, knows exactly where his cinematic roots lie. ‘I’m a big fan of Ken Loach,’ he says, nodding to the left-wing British director behind I, Daniel Blake. Unsurprisingly, he’s now crafting another socially conscious script. ‘It’s still going to be about workers; those that take their cars a lot,’ he hints. Expect road rage aplenty. 

Full Time is in cinemas from Friday 26 May.