A rush of excitement, followed by a wince— that’s what I experienced when I first heard that French director Olivier Assayas (the illustrious filmmaker behind such contemporary classics as Irma Vep, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper) would be premiering a new film at this year’s Berlinale. And then I learned the plot: a film director Paul (Vincent Macaigne) and his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot) are holed up together with their respective partners in their childhood home in the French countryside in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another pandemic movie about being cooped up with a bunch of overly privileged people? No thanks.
But with Assayas at the helm, there’s nothing cringe about Hors du temps (Suspended Time). Not enough time has passed to be able to look back on 2020 with any sort of illuminating hindsight, but we can look back on bits of it and laugh, and Assayas and his cast certainly handle it with a light and pensive touch. Anyone who has followed Assayas and his career will notice that Suspended Time contains thinly-veiled autobiographical elements (with Vincent serving as a stand-in for Assayas). The film begins with a lovely, sun-dappled property tour of the home the characters are living in, with Assayas himself providing the narration, describing everything from the tennis courts to the feel of his father’s chair and the types of books on the shelves, the colors of their covers indicating different types of literature— made even more tender by the fact that that is the actual home that Assayas grew up in.
Etienne and Paul are semi-estranged, and both in semi-new relationships: Carole (Nora Hamzawi) with Etienne and Morgane (Nine D’Urso). As they both separately indicate— to their respective partners, and Paul to his therapist over zoom— they just haven’t spent that much time together in a long time, and now not only are they inhabiting the same space, but it’s the space where so many of their memories intertwine, as frozen in one moment in time as their lives are. Suspended Time is a low-stakes film, and these tensions manifest themselves in petty squabbles and little annoyances. In one of the film’s funnier scenes, Paul and Morgane retire to their room to watch a movie, and Etienne and Carole gently warn them to keep the volume down low, with Paul countering that the previous night they had watched a silent movie. The whole exchange is played with that air of forced politeness that fails to mask the underlying strain.
Otherwise, Etienne relieves his anxieties by cooking, specifically whipping up crepes at a moment’s notice, channeling that energy into furiously whisking the batter. Paul, meanwhile, is much more neurotic about the virus, using gloves to pick up packages and adhering to the advice of websites of questionable repute that suggest leaving the groceries outside for four hours to allow the germs to dissipate. These sort of squabbles create some minor friction between the two brothers, but it isn’t really until Carole departs and the four become three, forcing Etienne to face the full brunt of his relationship with his brother, that the dynamic begins to shift more dramatically.
The pandemic is less a source of real fear, however, and more a distant threat in the background, and reason to put these people in one place for an extended period of time and let them cook. That the couples don’t want for anything is apparent. Etienne can work remotely on a radio series about musicians who died from COVID. Paul is able to dream up his next film (he name drops both Irma Vep— the Assayas film that he recently also turned into an HBO miniseries— and Kristen Stewart, who has memorably collaborated with Assayas twice in the last decade). When they need something, they can just order it from Amazon and have it delivered straight to their door. Paul has no issue dropping 90 euros on a saucepan ordered straight from its Swedish manufacturer. Sure, Paul, as he puts it, may not be “psychologically ready” to go to the bakery, but the pandemic, as it was for many who didn’t get sick, who didn’t lose their jobs, is a respite.
That little of this comes off as irritating is a credit to the lived-in environment crafted by the cast (all but D’Urso have worked with Assayas previously, and they share a breezy chemistry) and Assayas’ pleasant writing and direction. As the characters take inventory of their lives and relationships, the film’s final stretch is sweetly moving, looking ahead even as they are, for the foreseeable future, suspended in the present.
Hors du temps (Suspended Time) had its world premiere at the 74th Berlinale on February 17. Runtime: 106 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 