Wry, humane and thoughtful… the film treats its destabilising cluster of crises with extraordinary restraint. It presents the hard, complex business of surviving life in a disarmingly simple way.
Things to Come, or L'avenir (The Future) is you don't want to confuse it with the H.G. Wells spectacular, puts its title card on the shot of a tomb, which bodes ill, but the film may offer other answers. Isabelle Huppert is a pragmatic philosophy professor who doesn't let it get to her when her life starts to unravel, choosing to see the freedom in it - only partially a front - but responsibility isn't necessarily the cage it's at first made out to be. There's a lot of subtlety in the film, emotionally, generationally, academically, all the stuff with the cat... and one detail I keyed on early is the function of books in this story about people who do a lot of reading. Look at where they ARE in the book they're reading and simultaneously in their lives. Their relationships to books are also their relationships to themselves and each other. A quiet but compelling drama that nevertheless made me laugh on numerous occasions, but that's because it's such a clear capture of the French national character, which can be aggravating in person, I'll admit, but I find the kind of confrontational complaining very funny on film because I recognize it from all the Frenchies I've worked with.
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elgw
Lovely. Difficult things happen and life goes on.VagueVisages
Wry, humane and thoughtful… the film treats its destabilising cluster of crises with extraordinary restraint. It presents the hard, complex business of surviving life in a disarmingly simple way.Limbesdautomne
The new "qualité française" made by a 'daughter of' and a 'wife of'. The art of consanguinity in French cinema.More in pure French blood on La Saveur des goûts amers.
Siskoid
Things to Come, or L'avenir (The Future) is you don't want to confuse it with the H.G. Wells spectacular, puts its title card on the shot of a tomb, which bodes ill, but the film may offer other answers. Isabelle Huppert is a pragmatic philosophy professor who doesn't let it get to her when her life starts to unravel, choosing to see the freedom in it - only partially a front - but responsibility isn't necessarily the cage it's at first made out to be. There's a lot of subtlety in the film, emotionally, generationally, academically, all the stuff with the cat... and one detail I keyed on early is the function of books in this story about people who do a lot of reading. Look at where they ARE in the book they're reading and simultaneously in their lives. Their relationships to books are also their relationships to themselves and each other. A quiet but compelling drama that nevertheless made me laugh on numerous occasions, but that's because it's such a clear capture of the French national character, which can be aggravating in person, I'll admit, but I find the kind of confrontational complaining very funny on film because I recognize it from all the Frenchies I've worked with.onuryz
People over 40 like me gives 8 /10 others notTiago Costa
3 /5