Late Shift
Writer: Petra Volpe
Director: Petra Volpe
Cast: Leonie Benesch, Sonja Riesen, Nicole Bachmann, Selma Aldin
Writer-director Petra Volpe's third feature film Late Shift is only on our screens for 92 minutes, but a total of eight hours pass by within this microcosm of a worldwide crisis. While Late Shift — which is translated from its original title of Heldin (Heroine) — doesn't utter the words 'COVID' or 'pandemic,' there is a strong correlation between the film emerging only a few years after the world locked down and now, when there is a critical shortage of nursing staff in the medical field.Â
Late Shift opens with nurse Floria Lind (Leonie Benesch) arriving at a Swiss hospital for her shift, fresh-faced and luminous after her single day off. She greets the place with a smile, even when she finds out from Bea (Sonja Riesen) that they will be the only two nurses working an entire ward that shift, transforming what is already a mentally tough job into an untenable spiral of grueling, thankless work. She begins doing her rounds, checking in on her 26 patients of all nationalities and languages.
Her shift is derailed almost instantly when she stays to help in-over-their-head student nurse Amelie (Selma Aldin) clean up a soiled patient. What follows is a chain reaction of bureaucratic mismanagement and the tragic consequences that emerge with understaffing of this magnitude, where each extra second that Floria chooses to spend with a patient — to console, to explain their medical issues, or even to help a patient find a chess set in a cupboard — is a second taken away from another patient who may be at a higher risk.
Unlike what could be assumed from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's fizzy pizzicato score of percussive ticking, there is nothing being counted down here. This is not a race against time. This is not like medical television, where a doctor or a nurse will find miraculous cures mere seconds before it is too late. Instead, Volpe's film revels in the mundane pragmatism of the profession.
Long tracking shots from the camera of cinematographer Judith Kaufmann escalate tension, following Floria in extended takes as she goes from room to room to perform simple tasks. To highlight this tension is the scene when Floria cannot issue medication because her colleague, who is in the same stressful predicament, has the security key but hasn't clicked on the room light. Floria races around, interrupting conversations and disturbing sleeping patients in search of this colleague.
Benesch is superb as a nurse trying her best to perform efficiently under conditions that let mistakes and stress thrive. The actress shadowed various hospitals to learn the choreography of being on a ward and how to correctly execute medical procedures. This is to great effect, as Benesch's performance comes across as experienced and natural.
Volpe issues a statement of intent with Floria's interactions with the medicine cupboard, by lingering uncut on the procedure Benesch learnt, allowing audience insight into just how long preparing something as simple as painkillers can be for nurses whose time is precious. We long for a cutaway but Volpe is strategically reminding us of how painstaking a process it is every time a patient requires medicine, allowing us to empathize with the struggle that nurses go through to do what is often shown in the media as a task swiftly achieved.Â
But even as Volpe escalates tension quickly and effectively with long takes and Floria's frantic apologies to family members who just want answers, the sharp-as-a-needle script takes a second to deflate and remind us that there is a human being underneath the scrubs. When a wealthy, exceedingly privileged patient screams bloody murder for not being given a pot of tea — he states he is paying through the nose for premium service and not being given it — Floria snaps and throws his 40,000€ watch out of the window. It's a moment much needed in the film and for Floria, as this nexus point is where her professional facade slips and she, and audiences, gets a brief second to breathe through the tension facilitated by Volpe and editor Hansjörg Weissbrich's snappy choices. This comes at a cost for Floria, though, as her search amongst the hospital bushes for this luxury watch, which she describes as being worth several years of her wages, is another deviation from applying proper care to her patients
Among those patients who she strives to help but cannot do so sustainably include a mother on palliative care, whose trio of sons barrage Floria with questions about her condition; a chain-smoking woman who ignores the warnings that Floria states about the oxygen tank attached to her; a patient who has hung around through the entire shift waiting on a doctor to tell him what is the cause of his pain. This patient, or at least in how Dr. Strobel (Nichole Bachmann) handles them, is one of the few missteps the script takes as Floria challenges the surgeon for leaving without letting the patient know their condition. The film appears to take Floria's side, indicting this overworked doctor for not staying past their shift to appease a patient. Volpe is criticizing the entire system with Late Shift, but this scene feels a little too cavalier amongst what is otherwise an excellently crafted critique of systemic failings.Â
There is a certain quality to Late Shift that feels informed by a "boomer" mentality. The aspirations are grand and of good nature but there is a bluntness to it. Not the least in which the original "heroine" title feels similarly redundant in essence as the United Kingdom's "clap for the NHS" conceit that occurred during lockdown. The film, a slick potboiler of increasing tension, captures the issue without this title, nor could the excellent and emotional final shot be undercut anymore than the use of ANOHNI track "Hope There's Someone."
In Late Shift, a single nurse's shift declares that we are already too late if we are content with allowing our hospitals to continue so severely understaffed. The film works as a call-to-arms for systemic change within the Swiss hospital system and of the worldwide nursing crisis, and does so through an emotionally charged lead performance from an effervescent Leonie Benesch. And much like Volpe's affection for 90-odd minute runtimes, less is indeed more.
