How entertaining? ★☆☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 13 March 2016
A movie review of THINGS TO COME. |
YouTube review:
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“Anyway, after 40 women are fit for the trash,” Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert)
Director Mia Hansen-Løve, like Bruno Dumont, makes a good film every other one. Here, even with the mighty Isabelle Huppert taking up lead duties, Hansen-Løve’s latest is a disastrous mix of cod-intellectual pseudo-philosophical claptrap and tepid soap opera melodrama histrionics. THINGS TO COME is the sort of movie to give arthouse cinema a bad name; it is neither coruscating character study nor social cri de cœur; though maybe it is trying to be both – a double misstep.
Director Mia Hansen-Løve, like Bruno Dumont, makes a good film every other one. Here, even with the mighty Isabelle Huppert taking up lead duties, Hansen-Løve’s latest is a disastrous mix of cod-intellectual pseudo-philosophical claptrap and tepid soap opera melodrama histrionics. THINGS TO COME is the sort of movie to give arthouse cinema a bad name; it is neither coruscating character study nor social cri de cœur; though maybe it is trying to be both – a double misstep.
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Opening on a family ferry trip, Nathalie, husband Heinze (André Marcon) and their two children come across some sort of monument on an island. Is it meant to have presage and significance? It is tediously never explained. Jumping forward in time several years, son and daughter are now teenagers and Nathalie’s life is about to go through the wringer. And we should care about her travails, she is the focus – virtually in every scene – yet Nathalie’s hurdles are met with indifference (by this reviewer). The character is neither likeable nor, more heinously, engaging. Spouting faux highbrow platitudes in between (understandable) whining does not hold the attention. Of course, empathy means you feel sorry for her predicaments, but we should be along with her for the journey sharing the anguish.
Nathalie’s woes:
- Mother Yvette (Edith Scob) is losing mental acuity and is burdening daughter with emotional blackmail and erratic behaviour.
- Husband Heinz decides to leave her, after a prolonged affair, for his paramour.
- Her main income as a philosophy teacher is supplemented by writing a textbook that a new generation of publishers find staid and do not renew.
Aging is the theme hammering the audience. THINGS TO COME offers little new ideas on predestination, liberty and gender double standards.
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Attempted humour does not break up the monotony. There are interminable scenes with Huppert shouting for her wandering cat. Then there is a whole tranche at a cringe intellectual commune country retreat for pretentious 20-somethings, enunciating groan-worthy dialogue, such as, “Denying reality won’t lead to a new way of thinking.” Earlier there is a student protest (about the proposed increase to the retirement age? Dialogue is continually fudged.) Looking at bookshelves does not create a character from their supposed reading habits.
Contrast cinema on women aging, e.g. GLORIA, and intellectuals going through crises, e.g. WONDER BOYS and MAGGIE’S PLAN, and you will see not only THINGS TO COME falls short, but how deeply irritating it is.
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