Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025

[Chris Knipp]

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: SUSPENDED TIME/HOURS DU TEMPS (2024)

Covid lockdown in the provinces

The festival blurb effuses about this picture, describing it as a "tonally masteCrful dramady from the great Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Personal Shopper)" that amasses "a wealth of insigghts into the foiundational relationships and rural backgroud that shaped him" and "equally adept at thoughtfully reconstructing an unprecedented moment in our shared history with the grace and compassion that only a master filmmaker can bring." This is what festival blurbs do: whatever they're given, they make the best of it. And there are some interesting things here, especially for diehard fans of Olivier Assayas, or those interested in how well-off French movie directors spent the covid lockdown period. The lengthy monologues of the Assayas stand-in, played by the obiquitous Vincent Macaigne, which go on and on self-indulgently, have some interesting things to say. But these monologues are totally undramatic. The entire film is a setting waiting for an action that never takes place: it is static.

The Assayas stand-in is director Paul Berger (Vicent Macaigne), who is living through the covid lockdown in April of 2020 with his brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), a middle-aged music journalist, and their respective romantic partners, Carole and Morgane, of whom not as much is seen. This is an occasion for the two brothers to reconnect, and to remoinisce about their childhood spent in this syvan setting. Actually shot at the property where Assayas grew up. The whole thing is thus doubly autobiographical.

This is a challenge for Macaigne to deliver Assayas' long, complicated, highly intelligent and interesting speeches with admirable fluency. But they may seem more reciting than acting.

An AlloCiné spectator comment summarized by saying, "The best part of the film is the end credits with a song by Brassens, as if to reward us for having stayed until the end of this detestable film." However, the AlloCiné press and spectator scores are in the 60%-70% range. This is a film that would have more meaning for some segmants of the French audience, who would appreciate the nuances of French culture ad society and the context of French intellectual life. Nonetheless I found it interesting, even if at tines I felt that I was more being read to than watching a dramatic film.

The squabbles and silliness of the lockdown are familiar, such as ordering too many expensive and inessential things from Amazon because it is something to do, while the brothers argue over this. Another AlloCiné gleaning is a review that says that when it was the introductory film at Cannes, it was unique in reflecting exactly what was going on in the minds of everyone in the audience. It does reflect the covid lockdown experience, if from a rather upperclass-white point of view, of course. This film may be destined to be more a footnote thanone of Assayas' important films.

Suspended Time/Hors du Temps, 105 mins. debuted at Berlin Feb. 17, 2024, showing also at Sydney, Busan, Rio, the Viennale and Mumbai. French theatrical release Jun. 19, 2024. AlloCiné ratings: 2.3 (46 press, 2.1 spectators (46%, 42%). Low score.