If you know anything at all about French director François Ozon, then you realize just how little we know about him. Sure, we have all the standard biographical details, but as a filmmaker, he has been all over the place, making dozens of films that usually don’t look very much like one another. Granted, early films like Criminal Lovers and Water Drops on Burning Rocks display a deep commitment to Fassbinder’s brand of mannered dramatics and radical sexual energy. In fact, in 2022, Ozon remade The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant as a male melodrama called, fittingly enough, Peter von Kant. But over the years, the director has donned the stylistic masks of Antonioni (Under the Sand), Demy (8 Women), Chabrol (Swimming Pool), Lubitsch (Frantz), Téchiné (Summer of 85) — you name it.
At the same time, he has exhibited enough basic competence to tamp down his style, along with everyone else’s, to produce well-appointed, middle-of-the-road French dramas, a sort of neo-Tradition of Quality. His latest, When Fall is Coming, belongs to that stodgy category. But it is actually one of Ozon’s best good-taste outings. Set mostly in Burgundy, with occasional narrative jaunts to Paris, When Fall is Coming is a slow burn, a film that never delivers twists or shocks, but instead articulates the grinding dysfunction of a fairly ordinary family, gradually revealing one woman’s attempt to bring the generational trauma to an end. We meet Michelle (Hélène Vincent) as she is preparing for a visit from her surly, manipulative daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) and her beloved grandson Lucas (Garlan Erlos). Michelle goes mushroom gathering with her best friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko) and cooks the fungi for lunch, but a poisonous one eludes Michelle’s notice. Valérie is poisoned and rushed to the hospital, and she resolves that her mother will never see Lucas again.
Much of the rest of When Fall is Coming centers around Michelle’s efforts to repair the damage to her family. Or, perhaps Michelle is plotting to remove the impediments to her happiness. Ozon, to his credit, never telegraphs to the viewer exactly what is bubbling underneath the surface of Michelle’s demeanor of tenderness and concern. But the film does not engage in misdirection, either. Rather, it allows the past to gradually reveal itself as we learn exactly who Michelle is, why Valérie resents her so much, and why it is so vital to her that her grandson experience nothing but love and security in his life. There is an underlying theme of atonement for the sins of the past: whether it is possible, when it is appropriate, and whether doing so requires sacrifices in the present. Michelle’s troubled relationship with Valérie is contrasted with her easy rapport with Vincent (Pierre Lottin), the adult son of Marie-Claude, who has just been released from prison. We never find out exactly why Vincent was incarcerated; we just get the sense that he had a troubled childhood and eventually ended up in a spot of trouble he couldn’t get out of.
When Valérie makes a disparaging comment about Vincent, Michelle responds by saying, “Everyone deserves a second chance.” This belief is the primary impulse behind everything Michelle does, and over time, it becomes clear that Vincent is not the only one trying to correct the mistakes of the past. When Fall is Coming, as the title suggests, is largely about Michelle getting older — she begins to doubt her memory, wondering if she is approaching senility — and trying to settle accounts in advance of her impending death. While “Fall” is “l’automne” in the original French title, there is also a subtle English pun in the translation. There is, indeed, a fall (tombé) that sets in motion a custody struggle, a police investigation, and leaves the viewer wondering whether the friendship between Michelle and Vincent has been forged in violence.
For much of the run time, Ozon lays out two equally plausible scenarios. It’s possible that certain things transpire by complete coincidence. It’s also possible that Michelle, hardened by her hardscrabble youth, is capable of a ruthlessness equal in measure to her fearsome capacity to love. When Fall is Coming creates an atmosphere of vague threat in the Burgundy region, where lovely vistas and peaceful nature walks are scored with quiet, insistent strings and single piano notes. While Ozon is no Alain Guiraudie, there is a kinship with Misericordia, in the sense that life in nature represents an attempt at retreat from malevolence. But regardless of popular ideologies about the dangers of the city and the wholesome character of the countryside, Ozon postulates that our problems, and our moral failings, follow us wherever we go.
DIRECTOR: François Ozon; CAST: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier, Pierre Lottin; DISTRIBUTOR: Music Box Films; IN THEATERS: April 4; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
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