QUAND VIENT L'AUTOMNE (WHEN FALL IS COMING)

François Ozon titillates suspense and lurking secrets, waiting to be uncovered in Quand Vient l’Automne, yet time and again he withholds the expected payoff, leaving for a frustrating experience.

Accidental mushroom poisonings, suspicious falls out of windows and other curious mishaps meander through Quand Vient l’Automne. A fertile basis, it seems, for another subversively dark comedy of manners by French director François Ozon. Alas, the films turns out to be a decent idea botched by lazy execution.

Set in a rural village not far from Paris, the picture centres on a sixty-something woman, a bit of an outcast, with a strained relationship to her daughter. When something happens to her, she takes in her grandson, as she juggles the mundanity of life with a variety of accidents that could derail her life at any given moment.

When Quand Vient l’Automne might have worked if the secrets and lies the movie sets up built any sort of momentum, but Ozon merely delivers a promise he never keeps. Not one single time do you feel that the protagonist is in real danger of losing control of her life, which mostly negates the film’s reason for existing.

It doesn’t help either that the main characters behave in highly irrational ways. Though this is probably partly the point Ozon is trying to make about the general human condition, his message comes across as muddled and lazy, and especially in the third act that makes for a wholly unsatisfying experience.

Truth be told, visually this is one of the better movies in the Ozon oeuvre – the final shot alone is one of the most beautiful of the year so far – but who cares when the narrative is so inconsequential, drawn out and boring?

release: 2024

director: François Ozon

starring: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier, Pierre Lottin