in thalassotherapy with Guillaume Canet, caught up with a love of the past

If it outlines in the background the contours of a society obsessed with success, “Hors saison” is above all a love film, which features two beings tormented by doubt.

Stéphane Brizé drops the social chronicle for a love film and swaps Vincent Lindon, his favorite actor, for Guillaume Canet, whom he directs in Out of seasona beautiful love film, both funny and melancholy, in theaters Wednesday March 20.

Mathieu (Guillaume Canet), a prominent film actor, is resting on the Breton coast. Depressed because he gave up on the play in which he was involved at the last moment, he is consumed by guilt and tries, with his bathrobe on his back and flip-flops on his feet, to perk up by tackling his work without much conviction. “relaxation plus” thalassotherapy package in a center on the Breton coast. An idea from his wife, an overbooked TV news star who incidentally serves as his coach.

As he drags his melancholy into the steam and mud baths, he is contacted by Alice (Alba Rohrwacher), a woman he once loved and left. These reunions, which initially allow Mathieu to smile again, will gradually lose their lightness…

The doubt

After telling in 2022 the story of a separation against a backdrop of social crisis, in Another worldStéphane Brizé returns with the story of a man and a woman who once loved each other, and who happen to meet again.

Life has passed. Mathieu has become a star of the big screen. Alice, a pianist, got married, has a daughter, and lives peaceful days in this town on the Breton coast. This reunion upsets them, and confronts them with their choices.

Their paths have separated, they live in two very different worlds, but they have doubt in common. Mathieu, behind an apparent confidence, regrets not having had the courage to fulfill his dream of going on stage.

Alice’s musical compositions remain stuck deep inside, without anyone ever hearing them. Did they make the right life choices? What do they have to live together? What will become of this story? Never mind. In the moments shared during this enchanted interlude, out of season and out of the world, the masks fall and everyone draws from it what they need to continue their lives.

The film is constructed in contrasts: on the one hand the sanitized world of thalassotherapy, a world without affect, which echoes the well-regulated, mechanical life, and centered on the efficiency of Mathieu, a little vain too, on the like that sophisticated coffee machine that takes over, or those automatic doors that open and close for no reason, simply because you press a button.

On the other, Alice’s world, less glitter, less effective, but full of surprises, which rubs shoulders with the elements, a raging ocean, heavy skies, but also, out of season, deserted streets, closed shutters on empty houses which contrast with the sweetness of his family life, interior, warm and peaceful. A world, too, where the marriage of two old ladies is celebrated to the sound of birdsong.

Between Claude Sautet and Jacques Tati

The staging, deployed like a choreography, embraces this story of reunion through its rhythm and its framing. The shots are rather wide and fixed at the beginning of the film. Frames in which the character of Mathieu appears almost like a Jacques Tati-style clown.

Then the frames gradually tighten on the two protagonists, and their connections, the colors warm up, too. The film also alternates between comedy and melodrama, and the music, composed by Vincent Delerme, accompanies this staging to the millimeter.

Out of season is served by two wonderful actors. Guillaume Canet, all in nuance, plays a bit of self-deprecation in a role that sticks to him, facing Alba Rohrwacher is luminous and moving in her character of Alice, full of sensitivity, fantasy and emotions.

If the film, which is reminiscent at times of the cinema of Sautet, speaks above all of love, disillusionment, and life choices, it once again draws in the background the contours of a society in which there is no It is easy for anyone to chart their course without giving in to compromises.

The sheet :

Gender : drama
Director: Stéphane Brizé
Country : France
Actors: Guillaume Canet, Alba Rohrwacher, Sharif Andoura
Duration : 1h46 min
Exit : March 20 2024
Distributer : Gaumont Distribution

Synopsis : Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice lives in a small seaside town in the west of France. He is in his fifties, he is a well-known actor. She is over forty, she is a piano teacher. They fell in love around fifteen years ago. Then separated. Since then, time has passed, everyone has gone their own way and the wounds have closed little by little. When Mathieu comes to dilute his melancholy in the whirlpool baths of a thalassotherapy center, he finds Alice by chance.