L'avenir
Produced by Charles Gillibert
Written by Mia Hansen-Løve
With: Isabelle Huppert, André Marcon, Roman Kolinka, Edith Scob, Sarah Le Picard, and Solal Forte
Release Date: 06 April 2016
Color/Aspect: Color / 1.85 : 1
Editing: Marion Monnier
Runtime: 102 min
Release Date: 06 April 2016
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Color
L'avenir
With her fifth film, Things to Come, writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve creates an ideal role for France’s greatest living actress, and solidifies her own lofty position among the contemporary filmmakers of a country where mature cinematic narratives still seem vibrant and essential. The movie, whose less poetic but perhaps more appropriately equivocal French title is L'Avenair (the future), stars Isabelle Huppert as Nathalie Chazeaux, a Parisian philosophy professor whose well-ordered life gets shaken up by a series of unextraordinary but formidable events. Her aging mother’s health is failing, her husband is having an affair, her relationship with her grown children is undergoing changes, and she’s regarded with diminishing prestige in the ever more market-driven world of academia. None of this seems to phase the methodical, hyper-intellectual Nathalie, but over the course of the film the peerless Huppert effortlessly and often wordlessly conveys the minute shifts in how Nathalie perceives the world and her place in it.
The thirty-five year old Hansen-Løve (whose previous work as a writer/director include The Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love, and her one movie I could not connect with, Eden) offers deep insights beyond her years as to how people think and act at various stages of life. Formerly an actress herself, she requires her actors to express a wide range of emotions without big expository speeches or opportunities to showcase strong emotions. (Huppert easily gets my vote for best performances by an actress in a lead role this year, but the nearest thing to an Oscar show clip is a silent, comedic bit in which she angrily stuffs an ornate bouquet of flowers into a trash bin—hardly the kind of thing Academy voters usually go for.) This is a performance and a picture open to multiple interpretations, speculations, and musings by audiences who thrive on the kind of textured, astutely observed, minimalist story telling at which this gifted filmmaker excels.
Produced by Charles Gillibert
Written by Mia Hansen-Løve
With: Isabelle Huppert, André Marcon, Roman Kolinka, Edith Scob, Sarah Le Picard, and Solal Forte
Release Date: 06 April 2016
Color/Aspect: Color / 1.85 : 1
Editing: Marion Monnier
Runtime: 102 min
Release Date: 06 April 2016
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Color
An All-timer. One of the 5000 greatest films. Usually only awarded after repeat viewings.
One of the year's best. An excellent film. Possibly one of the 5000 greatest and certainly worthy of repeated viewing.
A very good film. Most films I see fall in the two- or three-star ranking. I give an extra half-star to three-star films that could end up on the list of the 5000 greatest.
A good film. Well worth seeing, but perhaps less significant than a two-and-a-half star film.
A noteworthy or enjoyable film that I can’t fully recommend. Still, two-and-a-half star films are often some of the most memorable films of a year.
A disappointment, an interesting failure, or just a bad movie. But still worth seeing if you’ve got the time.
A bad, rant-worthy film. Should be avoided regardless of hype or talent involved.
One of the worst films.
