The Method

Corporate sharks must swim to stay alive, and The Method forces seven to navigate in a very small pool. The movie's tagline is "When HR Goes Too Far," which is a fair assessment of this funny, scary, and thought-provoking Spanish comedy-drama in which a septet of ambitious executives gather in a corporate boardroom for a collective job interview—a Survivor-like competition that will leave only a single victor. Sitting around a conference desk supplied with a computer monitor and keyboard for each candidate, the overachievers are thrust into a psychological test designed to expose each person's strengths and weaknesses (the interviewees are led to believe that one contestant is a mole installed by the hiring corporation, which is represented only by a smiling, manipulative receptionist). It's obvious that The Method began as a play (The Grönholm Method, by Jordi Galcerán), and director Marcelo Piñeyro and acclaimed screenwriter Mateo Gil (who also wrote Open Your Eyes and The Sea Inside) maintain the play's intimate setting. But the material works equally well on film, thanks to an excellent ensemble cast and an offscreen atmosphere of anti-corporate protest that adds a rich dimension to this stimulating study of human behavior under manipulative conditions. The Method serves up some pointed lessons about personal and professional ethics, the advantage of adaptive thinking, and the harsh realities of employment in the cutthroat world of top-level executives. Recommended. (J. Shannon)