Dozens of surveillance cameras prowl the aisles from overhead, and he is instructed in how to recognize shoplifters and cheating cashiers. Thierry spiffs up his act with a suit and tie, and gets a security job at a big box store in a mall. Fellow prospective applicants in a group training session are shown largely as only hands, arms or shoulders as they heap criticism on the way his demeanor, posture, and clothing rate in a video test. We seldom see those with whom Thierry must humbly interact: an unseen but obviously younger man casually delivers harsh comments in an unsuccessful Skype interview. Director Brize utilizes the jitteriness of a handheld camera as he underlines the increasingly uncertain and impersonal nature of the job search. “The Measure of a Man” fictionally surveys the plight of people on the bottom rung of the job ladder through one man’s choices. Now his unemployment benefits are running out, and he has a wife and disabled son. Beyond middle age and unemployed due to a factory shutdown, he’s been in a months-long training program for a skilled industrial job for which he now realizes that he and the other trainees never had a chance at getting. When we first encounter Thierry ( Vincent Lindon in one of the best male performances of the festival so far), a man with sad brown eyes and a defeated look, he’s in the office of a government employment counselor. A deep humanism elevates this film beyond the mechanics of the genre I’ve started calling French social services cinema. The French title “La Loi du Marche” translates as “The Law of the Market,” and in many ways that is the more apt of the two titles. The state of the world economy has cut off my supply of free pens in Cannes, and it resonates with all seriousness through “The Measure of a Man” by Stephane Brize, the first of today’s films screening in competition.