The “game” here is not Renoir’s set of conventions and hypocrisies, but something much more workaday: the series of steps that young jobseekers are supposed to learn in order to find work. As the documentary follows four such job candidates and those who train them, a much richer story emerges. The need to find work, the learning of the codes of expected behavior, the employers’ demand for a level of submission far beyond the technical necessities of the job: all of this outlines the social and mental landscape in which the young precariat lives today. Rules of the Game is about acting in real life, acting (and possibly refusing the part) for the young jobseekers, but also for the trainers. The film is also about the already thoroughly conventionalized signs of rebellion that may be used by anyone who wants to escape from the rules. And it is about the expectation that we, spectators, have for the players of this game. This seemingly quite simple documentary progressively unfolds the various layers of preconception, the sometimes funny, but more often dramatic, play at work in the social game.