Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Petra Volpe
Starring: Leonie Benesch, Sonja Riesen, Selma Aldin, Alireza Bayram, Ali Kandaş, Aline Beetschen
If you enjoyed the Oscar-nominated The Teachers' Lounge and fancy seeing more of German actress Leonie Benesch portraying a frazzled public servant, you're in luck. Writer/director Petra Volpe's Late Shift sees Benesch swap the classroom for the hospital floor as she plays Floria, a nurse working the late shift at an understaffed Swiss hospital.
The movie opens with a sequence of nurses' smocks making their way along rails in the hospital's laundry department. It's a similar conceit to the army uniform sequence of Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front, with one of these identical smocks being donned by Floria as she arrives for what will prove a testing night's work. In Floria we have a face put to this under-appreciated profession, and her story is no doubt representative of the millions who perform her duties every day and night.
Late Shift's narrative is structured around Floria's attempts to do her "rounds," i.e. to visit every patient on her floor. It's by no means as simple as popping in and out of rooms and smiling reassuringly at patients, though Floria certainly does plenty of that, and Benesch has just the sort of angelic face you'd like to see in such a fraught time of uncertainty. As minor crises pile up, Floria's patients find themselves pushed further down a list of priorities. It's through no fault of her own, as she's but one of two nurses available for that shift (the movie closes with some troubling statistics concerning the global shortage of trained nurses).
While Floria is most definitely the protagonist, and appears in practically every shot, Late Shift is also something of an ensemble drama with a large cast of patients for Floria to contend with. These include a critically ill Turkish woman whose three sons grow increasingly anxious concerning Floria's inability to find time to check on their mother. A wealthy businessman tests Floria's patience with his entitled demands concerning trivial matters like his favourite type of tea. An elderly patient has been left to wait hours for a cancer diagnosis, which Floria knows is bad news but needs a doctor to break it to him. A Chinese man breaks out in a rash after a distracted Floria administers the wrong type of painkillers. A mother asks Floria if she thinks there's any point in continuing her cancer treatment, but it's not a question Floria can answer.
Late Shift stresses how today's nurses are also expected to perform the roles of receptionists. The phone Floria carries with her increases her burden as she's forced to deal with queries regarding spectacles left behind by previous patients. We want Floria to scream down the phone and tell these people to stop wasting her time, but she's far too professional for that. When patients give her abuse over how long they've been left waiting, we want Floria to explain that it's not her fault, that the blame lies with a collapsing system, but she knows that as a representative of the hospital she can't pass the buck.
Volpe resists the temptation to manufacture any over-the-top drama. Instead we have a series of small crises that all pile on top of one another, so many that we find ourselves losing track of some of the many patients Floria is left to look after. Benesch accompanied real life nurses at work to prepare for the role and she's fully convincing in her specific movements, in how she maintains a smile even when situations force her to grudgingly do so. When Floria is receiving abuse that verges on the personal, her face remains rigid, but we can see the repressed emotions in Benesch's eyes. A late moment of unprofessionalism seems like a stretch and out of character for Floria, but it serves as a release for the audience, a form of wish fulfilment. By that point Floria has earned the right to give in to her impulses. Just as Benesch's portrayal of a teacher gave us a new respect for that profession, her turn as a nurse here serves as a quietly powerful tribute to the best and most under-appreciated of us.
Late Shift is in UK/ROI cinemas from August 1st.
