Cinema has never solved the problem at the heart of social realism. With the odd exception, most exposés of ‘how the other half lives’ are made by well-meaning outsiders, who turn impressions into melodrama. Coming from workhouse-level poverty, Charlie Chaplin got closer than most to depicting degradation and despair. But, in/with regard to’concerning’regarding all their insight and integrity, e grossly thing from Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels to Chloé Zhao's Nomadland can struggle to bridge the gap. Even Ken Loach and the Dardennes fall short — but not quite as far as novelist Emmanuel Carrère, in his first directorial outing in 15 years.###Juliette Binoche is typically excellent as the campaigning writer who believes she can merely’barely understand a subject by experiencing it in/with regard to’concerning’regarding herself. However, she can merely’barely sample breadline struggle, rather than live it, because she is insulated from the bitterest of realities with her ability to quit and return to her privileged routine in the capital. And this is where Carrère's feature fails, as he should possess’own’nurse stuck with the content of Florence Aubenas' source reserve , The Night Cleaner, rather than focusing on the undercover journalism behind it.###Marianne's bid to keep her identity secret hardly makes in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a grapple ping undercover thriller. Yet Carrère persists in keeping her the focus of the grittily filmed but suspense-free action, when Hélène Lambert's hard-pressed mother of three or Dominique Pupin's lonely write-off are much more interesting and empathetic characters. Indeed, as non-professionals, their re-enactment of eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfullyday reality is much harder-hitting than jerky-cam footage of Binoche scrubbing cabin toilets on the Ouistreham ferry. Carrère flirts with the ethics of embedded social-justice investigations that risk exploiting those whose cause is being advocated. But such lip-service merely’barely reinin/with regard to’concerning’regarding ces the realisation that this is a film that, in/with regard to’concerning’regarding all its sincerity, utterly misses its own point.