MOVIE REVIEW
'Bread and Roses': On the Bumpy Road of a Union Drive
By A. O. SCOTT
The title of Ken Loach's new film dusts off a venerable slogan of the American labor movement. The call for "bread and roses," as a present-day union organizer named Sam Shapiro (Adrien Brody) explains in the movie, originated among the striking textile workers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912. Those workers, many of them women and immigrants, like the Los Angeles office cleaners Sam represents, asserted their rights not only to sustenance, but to beauty as well.
Mr. Loach, for nearly 35 years a tireless cinematic champion of the underdog, has marched under this banner from the start. He plies his viewers with plenty of bread - chewy and, to some tastes, dry and starchy scenes in which characters debate the finer points of land reform, welfare policy or syndicalist strategy - but he also scatters petals of whimsy and delight to nourish the senses.
In "Bread and Roses," true to form, there is a long, passionate discussion in a storage room after hours, in which the janitors in a sleek glass office high-rise debate the pros and cons of union membership. There are also several tense kitchen- table arguments about the conflicting demands of family security and worker solidarity.
As if to balance these moments, there is also a buoyant dance party, a sweet, tentative love story, and, most of all, Pilar Padilla in the role of Maya, an illegal immigrant from Mexico whose mischief and militancy lift the film beyond didacticism and transform it into a vital and complex piece of political art.
But let's not be too quick to write off didacticism; it's worth pausing to remark on the density and texture of the bread before moving on to smell the roses. To be didactic is, after all, to teach, and Mr. Loach and his screenwriter, Paul Laverty, share with Sam a fierce pedagogical impulse. Their method is an attentive, fine-grained realism placed in the service of the theory that political engagement grows from the ground and is sustained by generosity, humor and fellow-feeling.
You trust Mr. Loach as a teacher because he maintains a humble respect for his characters and an unsentimental eye for the difficulties they face. Maya's sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrillo), who helped her come to California and find work at Angel Cleaning Services, takes a dim view of the union.
For a while the film seems to be setting her up as a fink and a traitor, but Maya's easy sense of moral superiority - and the audience's - is upended by a devastating confrontation in which Rosa reveals the terrible price she has paid to support her family, including Maya, whose fervent unionism now appears a little selfish and ungrateful.
While Mr. Loach is unequivocally on the side of the union, his keen sense of contradiction and his storytelling knack keep his cruder propagandistic impulses in check.
As a result, the film makes a powerfully persuasive case, both for Sam's organizing efforts and for his unorthodox, confrontational tactics. For Maya and her comrades, the union drive - closely based on the Justice for Janitors campaign undertaken by the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles last year - is dangerous and thrilling. Heady moments of clandestine planning lead to thrilling acts of subversion as the janitors disrupt a power lunch and crash a moment of corporate self-congratulation with roaring vacuum cleaners as real-life movie stars look on.
But such exhilaration often gives way to the gloom and frustration of summary firings and workplace abuse. The film's ending is fittingly ambiguous: no bread and roses without sweat and tears.
The dialogue slips back and forth between Spanish and English (the film has subtitles in both languages). This seems like no big deal: you hear a similar linguistic melody on the streets of any big American city, but how many movies take account of this basic fact of urban life? Ms. Padilla, in any event, is a brilliant actress in any idiom, angry and sweet, without an ounce of vanity or affectation.
"Bread and Roses" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Labor and management tend to swear at one another quite a bit.
BREAD AND ROSES
Directed by Ken Loach; written by Paul Laverty; director of photography, Barry Ackroyd; edited by Jonathan Morris; music by George Fenton; production designer, Martin Johnson; produced by Rebecca O'Brien; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 105 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Pilar Padilla (Maya), Adrien Brody (Sam), Elpidia Carrillo (Rosa) and George Lopez (Perez).