All too often, from the 1980s on, employment interviews in big companies have been hell. An overqualified applicant with suit and tie, with a long long CV and with fear in the stomach is forced to go through the motions of the ordeal face to a recruiter (most of the time the DHR or the managing director), also with suit and tie but without a resume (he or she is a success!) and without the least feeling of anxiety (quite the opposite in fact, for isn't it fun to have somebody in one's power and to take advantage of the situation?) It is this treatment, legally inflicted on others by some people who seem to never have heard of the Declaration of Human Rights, that Antoine Laurain, the director of "Bacplus", exposes in this striking black comedy . In 4 minutes and eighty seconds (not a second more), with a single setting and only two actors, Antoine Laurain manages to epitomize the scandal of the job interview that enables the one who conducts it to act like a tyrant or an executioner with total impunity if he or she chooses to. A particular example that can naturally extend to all abuse of power situations, which are too many to be cited. To get back to the film, the two characters featured are a young applicant who has studied for NINE years and has a degree in MACROECONOMICS on the one hand and on the other a sadistic recruiter to whom such distinctions are simply meaningless. The only thing he knows is that the candidate is at a disadvantage, which, to his mind, allows him to confuse, irk and humiliate him. Starting from that premise, the writer-director takes pleasure in putting the most ridiculously far- fetched questions in the recruiter's mouth, thus satirizing to great effect the malevolent attitude of his likes in real life. A few examples : while the poor young man is busy detailing his studies and telling about his previous career in the banks, he is constantly interrupted and thrown off balance by questions such as: "Can you write on this sheet of paper: the orgasm of the pretty dragonfly?" or "Do you prefer eating salad with or without dressing?" And when the applicant does not find an immediate answer to a question he deems irrelevant, the interviewer hurls a particularly exasperating "Too late!". To add to the applicant's dismay, his torturer accompanies his words with a carnivorous grin, whose aggressiveness is emphasized by the camera moving forward, isolating the mouth and having it occupy all the frame. Supposing "Bacplus" followed the same pattern until the closing credits, it would be fine but depressing. Indeed, what happens to the candidate here happens to thousands like him. It goes without saying that the vast majority suffer this unfair treatment sheepishly without challenging their sadistic interviewer. But pessimism is not on the agenda and things change halfway through the film when the young man, unable to take any more of such nonsense, suddenly freaks out and starts fighting back, using the same weapons as his opponent: "Guys like you, I see ten in a week. And do you know what I feel like doing to guys like you? Sit them bare-buttocked on a flower- pot with a rat inside. And the rat is a shrewd animal : it wants to go out...!" By doing so, the candidate vicariously avenges all the past, present and future sacrificial victims of abuse of power. And that is not all, as no fewer than TWO PLOT TWISTS will follow! Not bad for such a short filmed effort! Brief but powerful, relevant and surprising, played to perfection by Denis Blaise and Bernard Humbert, "Bacplus" is an exemplary short showing that a gifted director can cover a complex question in a minimum of time. Antoine Laurain has done just that. For all I know, "Bacplus" is the second of the three shorts before becoming an acclaimed novelist ("Ailleurs si j'y suis", 2007; "Fume et tue", 2008; "Carrefour des nostalgies", 2010; "Le chapeau de Mitterrand", 2012). What if Antoine Laurain returned to the silver screen, in adapting one of his books for instance?