La Seizième

Amélie, a young Belgian woman having grown up in Japan, comes back to her adopted country in the hopes of integrating completely into Japanese culture. Hired by the Yuminoto firm as a translator, she rapidly discovers, at her own expense, the implacable rigidity of the manager, as well as the codes of conduct that govern social life in the land of the rising sun. From clumsiness to errors, she begins, like in a bad dream, an inexorable descent down the levels of hierarchy.  Gracefully staged by Moroccan born artist Layla Metssitane, this minor literary miracle, winner of the Grand Prize of the Académie Française in 1999, exposes the new despotisms and modern chauvinism, with a lively sense of humour that is found in each sentence.