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‘When Fall is Coming’ Review: François Ozon’s Deceptively Calm, Collected Film About an Unraveling Rural Retirement
François Ozon is on restrained but subtly mischievous form in 'When Fall is Coming,' an outwardly cozy tale of an unraveling rural retirement.
The life of sweet-natured retiree Michelle (Hélène Vincent) is seemingly fixed in a perennial fall, as is the film’s mood of quiet, almost comforting melancholy — until, amid this appearance of strange, ochre-hued seasonal stasis, the temperature of proceedings takes a drastic turn south. A French stage veteran and stalwart screen character actor who won a César for “Life is a Long Quiet River” 35 years ago, Vincent has rarely had a film built quite so devotedly around her presence, and in particular her storied face — closely but tenderly examined throughout by DP Jérome Alméras, in a tawny palette equally alive to flushed skin and turning leaves. There’s sterling support from Balasko, genial but occasionally caustic as a woman less inclined than her friend to skirt hard truths, and particularly Lottin, hitherto best known as a comic player, who brings both goofy affability and a hint of interior chill to a character whose lunkish exterior covers gnawing moral contradictions.
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