SUSPENDED TIME (HORS DU TEMPS) (France 2024) **1/2 Directed by Olivier Assayas
The film SUSPENDED TIME is so called as it is as if time stood still during the lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic.The film is set during the April 2020 lockdown.It follows two brothers, Paul (a film director) and Etienne (a music journalist), who are confined together in their childhood home in the French countryside. They’re joined by their respective romantic partners, Morgane and Carole. The old house is large, its rooms, objects, and the surrounding landscape trigger memories and reflections: of parents, neighbours, absences, childhood, past relations, much of which is revealed through the film’s voiceover.
As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Carole (Nora Hamzawi), his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne’s new girlfriend Morgan (Nine d’Urso). Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds.
Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth. A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, Suspended Time is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.
Though SUSPENDED TIME attempts to project what it would be like to isolate during the Pandemic, what transpires on screen is not what the general public would go through.In the film, the two brothers and their respective partners stay in a beautiful countryside house and experience the beauty of the outside.They undoubtedly isolate, but the isolation feels more like a secluded holiday than any imprisonment due to COVID-19.Another point is that the filmmaker and the journalist talk a lot about art and their experiences, which are way above those of many of the audience.In the evening scene, when they play a tune to be identified or the film the tune was taken from, much of what is played cannot be recognized by the average moviegoer.
The two brothers, Paul and Etienne, get on each other’s nerves, which results in one shouting match.Paul is more annoying, and watching these two on film can require a bit of patience.
Yet Assayas’s film is not without charm.Though nothing much happens, and the nuances of the characters begin to bother each other, for example, the volume of the music or what they want to do, like read or watch a movie, there are cute observations where one can laugh at the follies of humans.
The film contains lots of voiceover that gives the audience more perspective of what is going on and how the characters react and feel.The tactic was used very much in Francois Truffaut’s DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT and this film feels like Truffaut’s classic.
SUSPENDED TIME opened only in the United States recently and will premiere in Canada, being available on Digital September 30th.
LES FEMMES AU BALCON (The Balconettes)(France 2024) ** Directed by Noémie Merlant
This horror comedy is the writing and directorial debut of the actress Noémie Merlant, who starred in the hot French film PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
The word balconette in English could mean either a little balcony or a type of bra with light to medium support to enhance cleavage. But the BALCONETTE in the English title of the French film refers to the women on the balcony, as is the direct translation of the French title LES FEMMES AU BALCONThe three ladies are Elise, Ruby and Nicole.
Noémie Merlant plays Elise, dressed like Marilyn Monroe, and the other two ladies on the balcony are an online sex worker Ruby Souheilia Yacoub), and an aspiring novelist Nicole (Sanda Codreanu).Things get out of hand when they invite themselves to a neighbouring hunk’s room.The ladies get to dance, drink and do really stupid things, which in film terms means they get unguent in the director’s fantasies.
A current heat wave in France sees extremely high temperatures around France, including Marseilles, where the story is set.
LES BALCONETTES begins with a slow, wide and long pan of the balconies in a Marseilles neighbourhood.Just as one might think, things might go too slow, a black woman takes a steel pan to the head of her husband, causing him to bleed badly and crawl to the balcony where she eventually sits on him, suffocating him.As a fellow neighbour eyes a nude man on his balcony and begins masturbating, she is rudely interrupted by the black woman who had just murdered her husband.LES BALCONETTES is describes as a horror comedy, and one wonders if he film can match its eye opening beginning.
Apparently not.
The film title refers to the three female roommates who live in a building with a balcony, which they frequent.They often stare out at other balconies or apartments.They see one male hunk who they nickname Paul, a Gucci kind of hunk.Paul has long hair, walks around semi-nude, smokes cigarettes, and drives the three females sex-crazy.
So what do females do when they have nothing to do?Drink, talk about men, masturbate, and talk dirty.The three girls do just that, resulting in a comedy that is not only unfunny but boring and quite distasteful.Whatever happened to the black woman at the beginning of the film who had just murdered her husband?Obviously, this rather interesting part of the story is totally omitted during the rest of the movie.
Unfortunately, all the lady antics are not only self-indulgent but boring and very slanted towards a female audience.A few attempts of being politically correct are largely left to go nowhere.The story picks up a little in the second half, but interest in these three characters is lost already.
LES FEMMES AU BALCON (The Balconettes) premiered at Cannes in 2024 and opens at the TIFF Lightbox for a limited run.
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) (Canada 2025) ** Directed by Anne Emond
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Director Anne Emond tackles male trauma with her forty-year-old protagonist suffering from insecurity and a need for acceptance. Despite his regimen of exercise and antidepressants, Adam (Hivon), proprietor of a Quebec kennel, cannot help but despair over the ever-escalating climate catastrophe. One night, while feeling especially hopeless, he calls the tech support line for his newly acquired therapeutic desk lamp, believing it to be a crisis help line. He gets lucky: on the other end is Tina (Perabo), who's relieved to talk about something more meaningful than assembly instructions.This is a romantic comedy tackled with nuances and from a different angle.But Director Emond’s pace is too slow to match the premise.The pair connect over their shared existential worries and, when an earthquake rocks Tina's Ontario town, Adam takes the opportunity to drive there and help this woman he's never seen. Environmental dread brought these two together on the phone, so it's only fitting that a natural disaster prompts them to meet.This sets the couple off on a path of romance and adventure.
The film is a strange love story of sorts. Director Emond gets her character, Adam, to cry, mope, and come to terms with himself. Her female characters, those that Adam encounters, like Tina and his kennel helper, have stronger personalities. It is hard to identify with a protagonist with self-worth issues, but the film feels too like one with too much of a female slant.
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) premiered at Cannes this year, followed by a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.It opens this week in theatres.
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) (Canada 2025) ** Directed by Anne Emond
Director Anne Emond tackles male trauma with her forty-year-old protagonist suffering from insecurity and a need for acceptance. Adam is a kennel owner, Adam grappling with climate anxiety. Amid a natural disaster, he embarks on an adventurous, bilingual romantic journey to find her. Adam has issues that the story blames in his affection-avoidant father, and lets his young assistant take advantage of his good nature. To help combat his eco-anxiety, Adam orders a therapeutic solar lamp. Through the lamp's supplier's technical support line, he meets Tina, a radiant woman with a voice that soothes all of his worries. The film is a strange love story of sorts. Director Emond gets her character, Adam, to cry, mope, and come to terms with himself. Her female characters, those that Adam encounters, like Tina and his kennel helper, have stronger personalities. It is hard to identify with a protagonist with self-worth issues, but the film feels too like one with too much of a female slant.
DANDELION’S ODYSSEY (France/Belgium 2025) ***½
Directed by Momoko Seto
Following the footsteps of the Oscar-winning animated FLOW from Latvia, DANDELION’S ODYSSEY is a stunning animation with little plot, though penned by three writers, but is more than made up by the imaginative journey that defies time and space.Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto and Taraxa are four odd friends; four seeds used to belong to the same dandelion. Rescued from a nuclear explosion that destroyed the Earth, they find themselves hurled into the cosmos, travelling through planets and constellations. When they land on an unknown planet, they set off on an unforgettable adventure to find a new home and settle for good. through planets and constellations. When they land on an unknown planet, they set off on an unforgettable adventure to find a new home and settle for good.The story is told through sounds and music, with a touch of cuteness added as the seeds with their tentacles often dance in the wind.This is director Momoko Seto’s first full-length animated feature after three shorts.
DEUX PIANOS (Two Pianos)(Franc 2025) ** Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
The French film bears two heavyweights - director Arnaud Desplechin and Oscar nominated French speaking actress Charlotte Rampling.But the story revolves around a virtuosic pianist, Mathias Vogler (Francois Civil), who travels to his hometown of Lyon, where his childhood mentor Elena (Rampling) convinces him to collaborate on a series of concerts at the city’s historic auditorium.Elena is a supporting characte,r but the main character’s (Mathias) story is cliched all the way from start to end.In a park, he encounters a boy who seems to be his doppelgänger.This strange child leads Mathias to Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a woman he once passionately loved — and whose reappearance threatens to destabilize Mathias’ already-fragile mental state.Mildly entertaining at best, that at least avoids melodrama.
NOVELLE VAGUE (FRANCE 2025) **** Directed by Richard Linklater
Having spent several years writing for Cahiers du cinéma, Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), not yet 30, declares, “The best way to criticize a film is to make one.” So off he goes, convincing George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) to fund a low-budget independent feature and whipping up a treatment — there was never a proper script — with fellow New Waver François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) based on a news item about a gangster and his girlfriend.A meticulously and handsomely delivered black and white homage to the French New Wave aka NOUVELLE VAGUE, sees the homage paid through the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, also known in English as BREATHLESS.Cinephiles will definitely delight in all the film references as well as the depiction of New Wave greats like directors Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Agnes Varda and husband Jacques Demy.The film also depicts the idiosyncrasies of Godard, who shot BREAThLESS sans script and and continuity, much to the chagrin of his financial backers, makeup artist and collaborators.Seberg wanted to quit many times, but Belmondo finds all this absolutely amusing.
A PRIVATE LIFE (Vie privee)(France 2025) *** Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski
Lilian (Foster), an American psychoanalyst in Paris, is devastated to learn that her client Paula (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. Or has she? Visits from Paula's furious widower, Simon (Mathieu Amalric) and taciturn daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami), along with the discovery that files have been stolen from Lilian's office, suggest that Paula may have fallen victim to foul play.Assisted by her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), Lilian undertakes some amateur sleuthing. Academy Award winner Jodie Foster stars in this strange murder mystery black comedy, playing an American psychiatrist working in France.Foster speaks perfect French and it is strange but wonderful to watch her totally inhabit the role.She works with French veteran Daniel Auteul, who plays her ex, Matthieu Amaric, in an angry, deranged encounter among others.The script contains a lot of crazed characters, Jodie’s psychiatrist being one of them, with her conspiracy theories of murder and her past life.It all turns out well at the end with a happy ending, though a bit too far-fetched for the film’s own good.
RENOIR captures the delicate and troubled transition from childhood to adolescence through the eyes of Fuki, an 11-year-old girl grappling with her father’s terminal illness, portrayed by incredibly talented newcomer Yui Suzuki.Drawing on her own childhood experiences and set in the late 1980s when the director was the same age as her protagonist, Hayakawa’s narrative unfolds through the eyes of Fuki (Yui Suzuki), an 11-year-old girl coping with her father’s terminal illness. As Fuki navigates the emotional turbulence of preadolescence, she is left to fend for herself, with her mother (Hikari Ishida) overwhelmed by work and the stress of caring for a dying husband (Lily Franky).The film is a slow burn but covers effectively the subjects of grief, emotions, adolescence and a parent/daughter relationship.The heart of the story of Fuki’s father having cancer while her mother is working and stressed out over the situation, leaving Fuki much to herself.The film covers too many issues, such as a sex predator and leaves too many unanswered questions about the issues brought forward.One can argue that life is similar without many solutions, and director Jayakawa is providing a nuanced, though authentic, story of her past.
A USEFUL GHOST (Thailand/Singapore/France/Germany 2025) ** Directed by Ratchapoom Boombunchachoke
Un Certain Regard
Described as a black comedy, A USEFUL GHOST is an over 2-hour slow-burning deadpan comedy that moves so slowly that it takes great effort to stay awake, especially when watching the film during a festival. The film boasts a fresh idea. March is mourning his wife, Nat, who has recently passed away due to dust pollution. He discovers her spirit has returned by possessing the vacuum cleaner. Being disturbed by a ghost that appeared after a worker's death shut down their factory, his family rejects the unconventional human-ghost relationship. Msrch’s family accepts the fact and allows him to communicate with the ghost vacuum. Trying to convince them of their love, Nat offers to cleanse the factory. To become a useful ghost, she must first get rid of the useless ones. It is weird to see actors talking or making out with a vacuum cleaner, and the director Ratchapoom Boombunchachoke uses the fact for the utmost effect. The film is mildly amusing and one wonders the point in all of this.
CINEFRANCO 2025
28th edition of Cinéfranco – More vibrant than ever!
The Grand Public Festival will be held from November 7 to 16, 2025, at the Carlton...
