HÉLÈNE VINCENT, JOSIANE BALASKO

FRANҪOIS OZON: WHEN FALL IS COMING/QUAND VIENT L'AUTONNE (2024) - R-V

Plot twists enliven the life of a retired old lady

One must bow to the veteran critic Leslie Felperin, who ranks this film in the top ten or even the top five of Oxon's hefty filmography in her Hollywood Reporte review of Quand vient l'autonne which she sees as "a blackly comic thriller" and points out is "a tonal swerve into naturalism" after the "screwball energy" of his last feature the giddy Isabelle Huppert-starring period courtroom drama The Crime Is Mine. Such shifts are not uncommon in this filmmaker. He sent out a period YA gay teen romance with SWummer of 85 four years ago; a deadpan and expository tale of assisted suicide for the elderly the next year with Everything Went Fine ; then the very campy Fassbinder-based Peter van Camp. If we go back to far-off 2018, Ozon cirected By the Grace of God, a very serious and impressive based-on-fact exposé of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. There are many Ozons.

There are enough twists and turns in his new provincial French noir thriller for a miniseries, but Ozon deftly fits them into one hour-and-forty-two-minute feature, with intentional plot holes as if for breathing room. Overall the theme may be a variation on the old one that conventional, bland-seeming middle-class folks have plenty to hide; and that as the priest who'd heard confession for thirty years told André Malraux, people are a lot less happy than they appear, and none of them are grown up.

The pivot point of the acton is the aging but sprightly and stylish Michelle (Hélène Vincent), who draws sustenance from her country town and its lovely surrounding Burgundy landscapes and is looking forward to happy final years doting on her sweet young grandson Lucas. She's about to be left him for the last few weeks of the summer, when an innocent but very unfortunate mycological accident causes his testy newly divorced mother Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier, back again with the director for the first time since Swimming Pool) to whisk Lucas back to Paris and declare a long-simmering simmering mother-and-daughter feud to berenewed and permanent.

Michelle is shattered, and her best friend and near-neighbor Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko) turns ill and pessimistic; and maybe it's also being hinted here that pessimism causes certain fatal illnesses. A bright spot, but an iffy one, is the release from prison of Marie-Claude's son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) whom Michelle is fond of and in whose reform she believes. His mother holds to the idea that he's a bad'un for life. An unannounced voluntary effort by Vincent to set right Michelle's famiy rift has a surprising and very complicated consequence. Along the way, sme of the family hostility is explained when we learn what Michelle's former occupaton was.

All of this and more shifts around in ways that show off Ozon's slyest and most provocative tricks in a more or less naturalistic provincial setting (with a couple of trips back to Paris). There's a lot of skill about the way this is done. Ozon's provincial bourgeoisie is far from being as flat-out mean and evil as Chabrol's, and this action isn't restricted to the provinces anyway. But there's a dark cast and a danger to this world, even though it's got sweet things like the boy Lucas and his 18-year-old counterpart (Paul Beaurepaire), and even thouigh the depiction of Vincent, while it teases us and slyly hints at potential trouble, suggests people can shape up, despite what his mom thinks.

There's a lot about property, wealth, and parental control here. Before she cuts Hélène off, Valérie, who Michelle has already ceded her Paris apartment to, has declared that she wants to inherit the Burgundy cottage too, even though she doesn't like it, just for the value. Valerie is involved in a contentious divorce from her husband, Lucas' dad, Laurent (Malik Zidi), who wants Lucas to come and live with him in Dubai. Is that ownership or affection? Anyway, eventually Lucas opts for Burgundy: the charms of Dubai must be hard to grasp for a nine-year-old.

When Fall Is Coming/Quand vient l'autonne, 102 mins., Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire, premiere, also San Sebastián, Pingao. Oct. 2 French release. AlloCiné ratings: 3.5 (70%) press, 3.6 spectators (76%). A Music Box Films release. Showing:
Friday, March 7 at 3:30pm
Sunday, March 16 at 5:45pm

Sunday, March 16 at 5:45pm[/B]

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.