François Ozon visits old age with a thriller carried by the excellent Hélène Vincent

François Ozon depicts old age in its little joys and in its misery, in its beauty and in all its complexity. A rarity in cinema.

After My Crimea light and sparkling American-style comedy, François Ozon returns with When autumn comesa darker and more melancholic film, in which he paints old age with a palette full of nuances in the colors of autumn. The film, carried by wonderful actors, is released in theaters on October 2.

Michelle (Hélène Vincent), a cute little grandmother who lives alone in her house in the countryside in Burgundy, is delighted at the idea of ​​welcoming her daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) and her grandson for the All Saints holidays Lucas.

She prepares a fricassee for their arrival with the mushrooms that she collected in the forest with her old friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko). In the afternoon, when she returns from a walk with her grandson, her daughter is about to be transferred to the hospital for food poisoning. It turns out that Valérie is the only one who ate the mushrooms…

With this new film, François Ozon addresses the question of old age and family relationships. Between a mother and a daughter, Michelle and Valérie, but also between a mother and her son, Marie-Claude and Vincent (Pierre Lottin). This unstable son has just been released from prison, and it’s not long before he starts acting up again. Valérie is obnoxious to her mother, while the latter bends over backwards to please her and help her financially. “It’s horrible to say, but with our kids we missed everything!” summarizes Marie-Claude.

But what are these two seemingly peaceful old ladies hiding? What once happened in their lives that could have led their children into unhappiness and ruts? François Ozon puts old age at the heart of his film, with elderly people taking center stage, for once not confined to the roles of extras. The entire beginning of the film, at the pace of this age, shows us the life of an elderly woman. Everyday gestures, the little routine, the garden, solitude, but also the little joys, and the moments shared with Marie-Claude, and the mutual support.

Then little by little what is hidden behind these hunched backs, these wrinkled faces is revealed: a whole life that has boiled over, with its difficulties and its joys, its secrets and its shames. The film traces the trajectory of a life, that of Michelle, indelibly linked to that of Marie-Claude, while little by little, as an inevitable conclusion to their story, a drama unfolds that all the protagonists tacitly agree to. silence so that everything and everyone can find their place, and peace.

What is good, what is bad? Can evil beget good? The film thus poses the question of truth, good and evil, guilt and morality, without any of these words being spoken. Everyone will judge. The director also digs into questions that are dear to him, such as friendship, or even family, treated here from the angle of transmission between different generations, between different ages of life.

In a very sober production but full of winks, which evokes the worlds of Simenon for literature or Chabrol for cinema, Ozon unfolds his story in small touches, in a very slow rhythm, in accordance with old age and the melancholy of autumn. He gives Hélène Vincent, an immense actress rarely in the spotlight in the cinema, a main role commensurate with her. Michelle’s complex and ambiguous character is revealed little by little through what the camera shows and hears, but above all through everything that is not said, and that the actress suggests through her sensitive and intense acting.

Opposite her, Josiane Balasko is as convincing as she is unexpected in the role of Marie-Claude weighed down by life and consumed by guilt. “I wanted to film actresses aged 70 and 80 who wear their age and assume it, without artifice”, confides François Ozon. The cast is completed by Ludivine Sagnier, with whom Ozon reconnects twenty years later Swimming pooland by Pierre Lottin, who gives the character of Vincent his full palette of nuances.

When autumn comes is a very beautiful film. It shakes up a certain fixed vision of old age which suggests that after a certain age, life is a long, quiet river for beings emptied of their substance. Against the grain, François Ozon makes this old age the breeding ground for a thriller bringing into play all the ingredients of a good drama.

Gender : Drama
Director: Francois Ozon
Actors: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier, Pierre Lottin
Country : France
Duration : 1h 42min
Exit : October 2, 2024
Distributer : Diaphana Distribution
Synopsis : Michelle, a good grandmother in all respects, lives her peaceful retirement in a small village in Burgundy, not far from her best friend Marie-Claude. On All Saints’ Day, his daughter Valérie comes to visit him and drop off his son Lucas for the week’s vacation. But nothing goes as planned.