Full Time (À Plein Temps) is nothing like a thriller or a horror movie, and yet it must rank among the most tense and uncomfortable films I have ever seen. Every second feels like walking on eggshells. Every moment feels one perilous step from disaster. This French drama, by writer/director Éric Gravel, is a succinct film at 87 minutes. One would not want it to be longer; the audience’s nerves likely won’t take it.

Laure Calamy plays Julie, a single mother of two. She works as a maid in a five-star Parisian hotel, but commutes back and forth from a small village outside of the city. Her ex-husband is failing to pay child support. She relies on a neighbour to take her children to and from school. In a week where Paris is brought to a standstill from transport strikes, Julie desperately struggles to raise her kids, keep one job and apply for another, and escape a bank foreclosure all at the same time. The ‘full time’ of the title does not refer to Julie’s job, but her entire life.

Gravel strips his film to the bone. Everything feels urgent and rushed, as if it is always one step from tripping over. The propulsive nature of the editing makes every deadline feel like a race. Each sprint for a train, each last-minute dash to the workplace, and every panicky excuse for lateness hits powerfully. Moments of rest are depicted not as welcome relief but as miserable exhaustion. The sheer extent of Julie’s troubles are overwhelming, but worryingly familiar. It is a palpable reminder of just how fast modern-day life can be.

A key to the film’s effectiveness is its authenticity and relatability. While Julie suffers crisis after crisis, they are all familiar ones. The viewers can identify with having a bad job in a toxic workplace, or being disastrously late to an appointment with no way of getting there any faster. Gravel smartly makes her problems real and believable. There is no great calamity that occurs. With so many compounding little disasters already, there is no need for there to be one.

This is a very personal film, one that focuses almost exclusively on Laure Calamy’s spectacular performance. Julie is not a victim, and in many respects actively contributes to her own misfortune, but she is sympathetic and palpably identifiable. Calamy infuses her with great strength, but strength can only drive so far and when Julie fails she is remarkably brittle. She earns the audience’s affection, and in turn the tension is ratcheted up enormously as each challenge brings her closer to disaster. We want her to escape her tenuous situation, but there really do not seem to be many options open to her.

This is an unexpected tough watch, but it is also a remarkably rewarding one. I thought my day-to-day life was difficult to manage.