‘When Fall Is Coming’: San Sebastián Review

Dir. François Ozon. France 2024. 102 minutes. 

The tirelessly-inventive François Ozon can pull some unlikely rabbits out of his hat when the flamboyant takes him: as witness his final movie, flamboyant interval pastiche The Crime Is Mine. However Ozon can also be a specialist within the minor key – and it’s typically when he appears to play it muted and smart that the surprises emerge within the strangest methods. As lyrically autumnal as its title suggests, When Fall Is Coming ostensibly appears a sweetly melancholic meditation on age, guilt and reconciliation. And on one degree it’s that – however shot via with finely modulated irony, plus delicate hints of thriller as home melodrama crosses nearly imperceptibly into Claude Chabrol territory.

With a terrific lead from display and stage veteran Hélène Vincent, that is Ozon in his fine-wine register, however with acerbic notes; following the movie’s San Sebastian competitors slot, count on it to tickle a mature worldwide viewers.

The movie is a meticulously-crafted automobile for Hélène Vincent, a massively revered stage actor and director of a number of many years’ standing, whose movie profession notably features a César-winning position in Life Is A Lengthy Quiet River; she additionally appeared in Ozon’s 2019 drama By The Grace Of God. Right here she performs Michelle, an aged lady first seen in church listening to a parable whose content material slyly hints on the themes to return. Initially from Paris, she now lives alone in a snug home within the Burgundy countryside, in a village near her outdated buddy Marie-Claude (much-loved character participant and French box-office titan Josiane Balasko, additionally in By The Grace…).

Each ladies have household points: Marie-Claude’s son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) is quickly to be launched from jail, whereas Michelle’s daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) is harassed, self-absorbed and crackling with resentment in direction of her mom. Michelle’s beloved younger grandson Lucas (newcomer Garlan Erlos) is because of spend an autumn vacation along with her, however an unlucky incident scuppers that, leaving Valérie angrier than ever and Michelle anxious about her personal psychological state.

When Vincent returns to the village, with imprecise goals of opening a bar, Michelle decides to set him on his ft by using him as her gardener. Then a really dramatic occasion happens out of the blue – which Ozon declines to point out us, leaving a quivering zone of uncertainty on the coronary heart of the drama. He additional ups the ante by introducing a stylistic and narrative discrepancy that appears completely out of preserving with what has gone earlier than, however provides an eloquent new layer each to the household storyline and to the outlining of Michelle’s psychological state. With out revealing an excessive amount of, it’s a trick that Ozon performed to poignant impact in one in every of his early movies – and followers will admire the callback.

Spirit of place and season is essential, with Jérôme Alméras’s lyrical however unshowy camerawork maximising the palette and textures of rural autumn. The movie is impeccably forged: Sagnier is strikingly rebarbative, and the movie performs astutely on the truth that Valérie is simply not that simple to sympathise with. Vincent, tantalisingly elusive below the guarded exterior of a taciturn working-class male, ought to symbolize a wider breakout position for Lottin, already common in comedy sequence Les Tuche and likewise seen this yr in The Marching Band.  His restrained, fine-tuned efficiency retains us guessing about Vincent’s motives and interior nature.

Above all, although, this movie is a present of a showcase for Hélène Vincent. She supplies a magnetic centre to the drama, as Michelle’s emotions, doubts and unresolved ideas about her personal previous – the reality ultimately rising within the quietest, most considerate reveal – play out play in a fancy, delicate internet of themes regarding redemption, parental accountability and self-acceptance. Given the soft-focus cosiness with which cinema so typically depicts older characters, particularly ladies, this movie’s dramatising of late-life content material, sorrow and solitude is as subversive in its means as something Ozon has performed, and a tartly clever rejoinder to the clichés of display ageism.