Olivier Assayas’ memoir about the coronavirus lockdown – The Hollywood Reporter

Nine D’Urso and Vincent McCain in “Suspended Time”

© Carol Betwell

No two words can strike fear into a critic’s heart quite like “Covid,” and yet with a director as masterful as Olivier Assayas, it seemed reasonable to hold out hope for something more than the simple, unassuming humor of a neurotic germaphobe. The obsession with masks, social distancing, and the potential for grocery contamination. Unfortunately, that’s a big part of what you get in hindsight Suspended time (Out of time). Most of us never thought our experience in the anxious early days of pandemic lockdown would matter much to anyone outside our social community, but filmmakers keep making that mistake. They need to stop.

Perhaps Assayas was too immersed in meta-filmmaking satire for his hasty reimagining of Irma Vip told HBO that he couldn’t resist casting Vincent Macaigne again as another version of himself. Macaigne is mildly entertaining as a filmmaker named Paul, full of nervous energy and nagging concerns that range from illness to career oblivion, from trying to salvage a burning pot to more existential questions.

He’s in quarantine with his brother, rock journalist Etienne (Micha Lescaut), at their childhood home in the sunny countryside of the Chevreuse Valley near Paris. Etienne has a flinty side but is generally more delicate than Paul, though perhaps it’s his therapeutic quest to make the perfect crepe that helps take the edge off.

Also in the residence are the siblings’ girlfriends, both of whom are recent enough additions to the men’s lives to make this the first time either couple has lived under the same roof. The woman’s simple presence acts as a calming influence throughout. It’s only when Etienne’s partner, Carole (Noura Hamzaoui), has to return to the city late in the film, leaving him alone for the first time with Paul and Morgane (Nine D’Urso), that he snaps, vomiting up angry resentment toward his monomania. A brother in a prominent scene finally reveals some conflict in the endless streams of conversation.

Even by French standards, this is an incredibly talky film. Interspersed with Paul’s lengthy audio commentaries – about the city and the region; Neighboring houses and their owners; Trees and gardens. The furniture, art and books in their home are filled with memories of their late parents and grandparents – often of dazzling beauty and lightness. This aspect is physically fortified through the use of the actual Assayas family home. But the voiceovers also sound like clumps of prose in a movie too busy navel-gazing to build narrative form or momentum.

An autobiographical companion piece of sorts Summer hoursthe director’s brilliant 2008 film about a family that reunites in a country house filled with art and memories, Suspended time It provides some of the pleasures often associated with Assayas’ work. This especially includes the simple, crystalline nature of cinematographer Eric Gaultier’s images, the fluid editing, and intermittent bursts of vintage rock music.

However, the project mostly feels like the result of a writer-director spending time, sketching out impressions of a life interrupted by external circumstances, without knowing what he wants to say in all of it. There’s a lot of reward to be had from attaching self-referential jokes to various points in Assayas’ career, even if I did cringe at the mention of an abandoned project by star Kristen Stewart – so great in the director’s career Sils Maria clouds And Personal shopper – As a Portuguese nun.

For an author approaching seventy, with nearly four decades of work that includes a generous share of absolute gems, there is a disappointing lack of perspective to the insights here. The collision of past, present and uncertain future is more interesting as an idea than as a satisfyingly developed narrative, and the self-examination that emerges during Paul’s weekly Zoom calls with his therapist (Dominic Raymond) and Facetime conversations with his former partner (Maude Wyler) or industry colleagues does not They never build a great sense of intimate access.

It is perhaps significant that the brother less inclined towards introspection and involvement, Etienne, is the more convincing of the two main characters, even if his colorful shades and cool superiority keep him at arm’s length. This also allows Lescott, a new actor in Assayas’ orbit, to give shades to his character that others lack.

Etienne is clearly different from Paul, as he sees the lockdown as an infringement of his freedom by the government and the overblown media. Even Paul’s preference for ordering from Amazon over risky in-person shopping bothers him. In contrast, Paul finds confinement strangely reassuring, making him apprehensive about resuming normal life once the end of their isolation is in sight.

There is a possibility in ideas about siblings who knew everything about each other while growing up but have less in common in adulthood, suddenly finding themselves getting along and leaning into or resisting their previous connection. But Assayas is unable to determine the meaning of this brotherly dance.

Women, as attractive as they are, don’t gain much dimension. The scene of walking and talking through fields full of colorful wildflowers at the end, where Paul and Morgane end up sitting under a tree considering the fundamental importance of love, seems like a completely routine setting for a French film.

The director is clearly thinking about the effects of time and experience in a setting made meaningful by virtue of its history but also divorced from reality due to the conditions of forced lockdown. Yet the film’s isolation feels trivial and empty. Fans of Assayas will be hoping for a return to form after 2019’s tense, twisty spy thriller, Wasp networkyou will have to keep waiting.