Le monde après nous is a short, bittersweet feature about a young writer from Lyons, Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli), trying to make it in Paris. The director has some fun looking at the lot of the impoverished writer: gone is the freezing garret under the gables of nineteenth-century Paris, to be replaced with the decidedly unromantic ‘studio’ apartment Labidi shares with his pal. We see the pair sharing the cramped quarters, barely big enough to accommodate a single bed and room for a sleeping bag on the floor. It would be safe to say that Labidi is a writer of the struggling variety.

However, things start to look up for Labidi when he encounters Elisa (Louise Chevillotte) in a bar. He asks for a cigarette – despite not being a smoker – and a love story is ignited. He’s a writer, she’s studying acting; money is tight, but they decide to look for a place together. And when they move into their lovely expensive apartment, reality moves in with them and gives the relationship a few nasty jolts. As the film progresses, Libidi searches for ways to make money. The obvious way would be to finish his book, but for some reason Libidi resorts to increasingly nefarious ways of getting his hands on some cash. His relationship is suffering and it’s all starting to look decidedly pear-shaped for this likeable scribe.

Le monde apres nous As well as dealing with the often-comedic challenges of trying to find accommodation in Paris on a shoestring, the director also touches on issues of racism. Libidi, who is of mixed heritage (his father is French, his mother Tunisian), has to call in a robbery and when he does so, he is asked about the race of the person who took his bag: the emergency caller wants to know if the thief was an Arab. Libidi talks of his heritage and of feeling like a fraud.  Yet the film stresses the almost impossibility of not being a fraud and being true to oneself in a society that imposes expectations of a lifestyle so often out of reach.

There are other themes, too, that will strike a chord with a generation of men and women juggling zero-hour contracts, delivering food, working in bars and failing to meet the promise of their youth due to the almost impossible struggle to make a living wage. This is highlighted by Libidi coming across an erstwhile companion from writing class: white, middle-class and comfortable, it is his friend who is published first while Libidi suffers the ignominy of having to deliver his friend his dinner.

There are plenty of delights in this 85-minute movie and I could have spent more time with Libidi’s adorable parents and maybe hung out a little more in their friendly neighbourhood bar. As Elisa, Chevillotte shines – literally, for she is often seen bathed in light or wearing dazzling white – and a little more of her company wouldn’t have gone amiss either. However, Salah-Cazanas has opted to leave us wanting more, which is a rarity in these times of three-hour blockbusters. His hero is of the all-too-human variety, which is also a pleasure, and the audience roots for this hapless writer, who is a romantic of the old school, and who is carried off with aplomb by Gabrielli. For all its relatable contemporary themes, Le monde après nous is a film firmly rooted in a cinematic tradition that France has excelled in for decades.