L'emploi du temps

"Time Out" seems to be the wrong translation for "L'emploi du temps". Laurent Cantet, the brilliant French director has given us a film that has a hypnotic quality and makes the viewer thinks. M. Cantet also wrote the material for the movie with Robin Campillo. This is, without a doubt, one of the most satisfying films coming from France in recent memory. As he proved with his "Human Resources", M. Cantet loves to present us stories in which characters are at the crossroads of their lives facing dilemmas related to things in the work environment.

If you haven't watched the film, perhaps you should like to stop reading now.

Vincent, the main character of "Time Out", is seen at the beginning of the film driving aimlessly through rural France, stopping at rest stops to sleep, buying things at roadside shops, or just idling around. When he calls his wife Muriel in his cell phone, we hear banal conversation between a married couple where the husband is calling home to check on his family. The only trouble is that Vincent is unemployed and he is reluctant to break the news to the family.

This man has a lovely wife, three normal children. His parents seem to have a good relationship with him. We see no sight of conflict. That is why so hard to understand what makes Vincent tick. Is it shame? Is it an ego thing? Is it his pride? Nothing seems to answer our questions because for all appearances, he is a normal person.

When Vincent hints about the possibility of a job in Geneva with the UN, his father, as well as the rest of the family believes him. Vincent witnesses a meeting in the UN building about the investment opportunities in Africa and how is that body going to be instrumental in helping the emerging economies. Suddenly, Vincent makes a plan to get some of his friends part with their savings by inventing a sure plan with incredible returns. In a way, it seems that people will be reluctant of schemes such as this one, but obviously, greed play a great deal in their minds and they give money to any charlatan. I know it first hand since I have a close friend that lost a lot of money this way, even though he understood about the risks involved.

Jean Michel, the mysterious man that happens to overhear Vincent pitching the idea to prospective investors, realizes the impossibility of the scheme. Vincent tells him about his plight and Jean Michel offers him a job helping him smuggle the counterfeit merchandise that makes a lot of money.

Unfortunately for liars, discovery is only a phone call away. Muriel finds out the truth and confronts Vincent about it. She tells her father in law, who has given an obscene amount of money to Vincent. When the father arrives at the house, Vincent flees into the night to the comforting highways that have become his best friends because they don't ask anything of him. Eventually, Vincent is seen calling Muriel from a roadside. She pleads with him to come home, but he refuses. The turmoil within his soul will not let him see the end of the tunnel. In his own mind, there is no solution for the problem he created.

The director hints to an easy solution for Vincent with an imminent suicide, but no. In the last sequence that ends the picture, we watch a Vincent dressed all in black being interviewed for a job that his father has been instrumental in securing for him. Are we seeing the truth, or are we seeing what the director has brilliantly done in order to get take us to a possibility that will register as the solution in our minds. The only thing is M. Cantet has left us clues about what really becomes of Vincent.

Aurelien Recoing, is a terrific actor. As times he reminds us of Kevin Spacey, and at times, he resembles a more ethereal James Gandolfini, but make no mistake, M. Recoing is an actor who captured the essence of the troubled Vincent. As Muriel, Karin Viard, is perfect. She gives a restrained performance. Also, Serge Livrozet, the kind Jean Michel, makes a wonderful appearance.

We await for the next work by the amazing Laurent Cantet.

This is a purely awesome film, the best of Laurent Cantet, the movie that reavealed him, and the best role ever from Aurélien Recoing. This is inspired from actual events,a nd this very same story was remade one year later with Daniel Auteuil: L'ADVERSAIRE. Both are terrific but not sjown in the same manner. The 2002 film from Nicole Garcia was more criminal oriented. Here, you are glued, stuck to this riveting tale. You always wonder what will happen in the next scene. An outstanding drama, involving normal folks to whom happens something really terrible. Top of the top. One of the best dramas ever. Serge Livrozet, this non professional actor, gives here a jaw dropping short but unique performance. The amazing story of a man more and more prisoner of his own lies.

Ironically, I just saw this a day after viewing Abbas Kiarostami's brilliant "Close Up", a story of a man who could no longer accept the endless banalities of his life and decided to become someone else (a film director!). That man had no sense of identity about himself but he knew what he cared about and what he believed in (the power of art and cinema). That brings him one up on the hero of this story. Vincent is a man who also cannot accept the banalities of his life, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of who he is or what he really cares about. It's as if he was born out of a computer software program. He knows what he's supposed to care about: nice home, nice car, nice bank account... But his work as an investor is so deprived of any human value that he loses all sense of values. His environment; a sterile, generic, upper middle-class vacuum that could make one believe that all of France has turned into Silicon Valley with a touch of the Scandinavian, has none of the passion or warmth that one identifies with being human. He has a loving wife, but according to his 'program', he believes that he would lose her if she knew that he was no longer able to function as a cog in the machine, and provide her with the lifestyle that she has grown accustomed to.

That is the first tragedy of Vincent, because his wife really does love him. The second tragedy of Vincent, is that even though he recognizes his need for freedom, he doesn't know how to use it. He's like a man who has been released from a lifetime of imprisonment, but still hangs around the prison yard because he is unable to comprehend what might be available to him. He'd lost his job because his love for being free was more important to him than keeping his appointments, but most of his time spent in his new-found freedom is in doing the same job he'd done before: investments. The only difference now is that he likes to believe that the investments are helping developing Third World countries. He knows that there really are no investments (he keeps the money that people give him and spends it on a nifty Range Rover, among other things), but momentarily, he can feel as if he is 'somebody' to his family and friends when he tells them of this meaningful new job he (allegedly) has.

Vincent has been described by many as 'everyman', but I think of him more as 'everyman who has just stepped through the looking glass'. Instead of taking a good, hard look at himself, he somehow ended up taking a look beyond himself because he could not find a reflection. He can't even recognize how much he's patterned his children to follow the same program he did. We see him teaching his kindergarten-age son how to 'hard sell' his toys at a school fair. Later, in a fascinating scene, we see him and his family doing what most people of his class do in their free time. They go shopping in an upscale, overpriced store to buy clothing that they know they don't really need. Vincent has it all, but it fills nothing in him. His family has it all, yet they don't seem to question the fact that they rarely spend any time together.

Laurent Candet has created a beautifully somber and sober look at the price of 'success'. The film is practically drained of all color, save for blues and grays, to illustrate the life force that has been systematically drained from Vincent throughout his life. And the score, a somber cello piece, refreshingly accentuates Vincent's mind instead of his actions (like most scores do). It is like a slow-moving merry-go-round that brings on a sense of familiarity that is simultaneously comfortable and unnerving. Because what the gist of it all is: is that no one wants to spend their life on a merry-go-round. Even a comfortable one.

Shakespeare spoke of the tangled web of deceit suggesting it was a terrible trap. Laurent Cantet presents us with another view. His hero in this film, Vincent (played to perfection by Aurelien Recoing) appears to revel in the freedom his dissembling brings...at least for a time. A middle-aged, middle class man who has lost his job keeps this information from his family and sets out on a complex journey of survival, both existentially and financially, involving schemes that he eventually has ambivalent feelings about. We also see another side to this complex man...the loving husband, father and son. Are we to judge and dislike this man? Should we cast the first stone?

I was particularly impressed by the subtle way Cantet depicted Muriel, Vincent's wife (performed with sensitivity and grace by Karin Viard). Her suspicions and uncertainties are written only on her lovely face...very little is ever said. And yet she's not seen as the long-suffering little woman...not at all. She appears independent and strong.

And then there's the affecting scenes in the snow-filled mountains... in that place of isolation (so representative of...well...of us all). There's majestic beauty and danger.

The mystery, the thought=provoking qualities of this film have made it for me a haunting and moving experience...One that I'd certainly recommend!

Has anybody ever set up a truck stop shot more magnificently?

This film is the full ten thing. Cast is spectacular, the photography superb, the unobtrusive music on the money, the story and its effects on the life of a family, affecting. Subtlety is a hallmark here. If you don't know the story line it must be even more powerful in a first viewing. As Fellini made at least two films that can be seen as defining the male of the Catholic/Italian species (8 1/2 & Amarcord) this magnificent film from France from a director I am not familiar with, defines "the problem of being male." I was fully involved and unable to complete a sentence for twenty minutes after the lights went up. But it is just not male identification at work here. It is the anguish and plight of the wife, magnificently played by Karen Viard, or the children who are as confused and anxious as any of us. The father, a very French man with a franc or euro, even redeems himself with love and compassion. And the "unsavory" seller of bogus goods who rescues our Vincent by offering employment, comes through swimmingly with compassion and understanding. I can not recommend this film enough. Please see it.