Le temps qui reste

Ozon is a strange figure. Strange in a sense that actually makes him normal: sometimes controversial, sometimes authentic, but always a great analyst of the emotion's spectrum.

It becomes clear really early that the film will be more of a contemplative portrayal of death than a daring fight lead against it. And sometimes it's better that way, to take things as they come. Thirty one year old Romain isolates himself from his family and friends and deals with several stages of the whole "accepting death" experience. A so dreaded experience. Consequently, the film is distant and may seem tedious at times, but all the means serve their purpose.

"Le temps qui reste" (gorgeous title, I feel obliged to emphasize this) is a difficult film: homosexuality, solitude and death are themes which few can bear light-heartedly. Still, Romain's process of severing himself from himself is intriguing at all times and the film's final sequence is of a most sincere impact. It's about adapting to the idea of dying in a glacial modern society.

We are generally alone in this world and all we have is our family. And if we lose that, we are left with thoughts, never to be forgotten. Le temps qui reste.

"time slips away and the light constantly fades..." (the Cure, Seventeen Seconds from the eponymous album, 1980).

Here comes François Ozon once again with a long-anticipated vehicle and a prickly topic which has been used countless of times in cinema with varying results: a person who has an incurable disease and who's going to die soon. She's got only a few months, even weeks to live. How does she react? How does she live her last moments of life? This is the thrust of Ozon's latest opus "Le Temps Qui Reste" (2005) and it is a remarkable movie in which Ozon eschews what could have caused the fiasco of the film: pathos. There's no whiff of it in Romain's slow way towards death. According to his author, it is the second opus of a trilogy begun with "Sous Le Sable" (2000) and which will close with a third film about the death of a child. It's true that "Le Temps Qui Reste" has a few common points with "Sous Le Sable": both end with a sequence in which the main protagonist is standing on a beach but the difference between the two films lies in the fact that in "Sous Le Sable", the viewer and Charlotte Rampling weren't fully sure about Bruno Cremer's death. Maybe did he abscond, maybe did he leave Rampling whereas here we are absolutely sure about the terrible truth: Romain is going to die in spite of the words pronounced by the doctor aiming at bringing an inkling of hope. Besides, the sequence at the hospital is credible. A doctor has to tell his patient that there is a glimmer of hope although he pertinently knows the tragic exit. The sequence which comes after where we can see Romain sitting on a bench, looking around him also rings true.

So, Romain is a young photograph in his early thirties. He's homosexual and lives with his lover in a quite comfortable flat. His life shows all the signs of professional and sentimental success. But one day, everything falls apart when one day he learns that he has a generalized cancer. Where Ozon retains the attention is how he shoots the evolution of his main character. The author of the fabulous "8 Femmes" (2002) has once said that he didn't care about the New Wave (although he puts Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol in his straitjacket of favorite filmmakers). Well, I don't care for it either apart from notable exceptions. Among these exceptions, there's "Cléo De 5 à 7" (1961) by Agnès Varda, probably one of the most accessible movies of this movement in spite of the gravity of the topic. The topic is the same as "Le Temps Qui Reste" and the psychological evolution of Cléo is more or less the same as Romain's. Ingoing at the beginning of their tragedy, mature at the end as death comes closer. In Romain's case, Ozon presents him as an obnoxious, brazen and egocentric young man who only lives for his job. Then he has an argument with his family an evening (the sequence of the dinner is quite incommoding) and then with his lover. He decides to visit his grandmother (Jeanne Moreau) and his stay at her house constitutes the crux of the film. He finds himself with a person who lives the same situation as him. He tells to her: "because me and you we are close to death". In Varda's piece of work, it was a young soldier Antoine who helped Cléo to accept her disease and so made her fearless facing death because he saw death very close to him too (the context was in 1961 during the Algerian war, a "dirty war", the equivalent of Vietnam for the USA). In Ozon's flick, Romain's stay at her grandmother's altered him: he tries to reconcile himself with his family, his lover and is even ready to make a baby to a family (the young woman is played by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi who held the main role in Ozon's precedent film, "5x2", 2004). After that, Romain seems to have become another man, he has accepted to belong to the world that surrounds him and appears to be at ease and relieved amid it (see the last almost timeless sequences when he's by the sea). So, if the first part of the film was disturbing, the second one has a placating whiff. Romain's visit to his grandmother is the central and crucial moment between the two. Ozon's camera knows how to capture the situation, the feeling, the gesture, the look and the director has a real genius to let the what is left unsaid show through.

As Romain slowly but surely makes his way towards the adamant death, there are flashes of his childhood which arrive in his mind. Maybe, they help him to accept his own death. Moreover, it is often said that old people behave like children. In a way Romain also behaves like a child, at least in the beginning of the movie, then, there's still time to become a grown-up.

"Le Temps Qui Reste" is a small cracker which maybe won't cater for all tastes because of its thorny topic. But it has the merit to put aside formulaic or corny ingredients. As for Ozon, more power to him although it's very likely that like some of his fellows (Patrice Leconte), he'll still have to wait for a long time to receive the honors he deserves

This film's main theme is such a cliché and so simple: What would you do if you are told that you only have 2-3 months to live? How would you deal with things? Would you fight, and do everything in your power to, perhaps, experience that curing miracle, or would you accept things, as a matter of course... and wait for death to come. This film really makes you think. The main character, marvelously performed by Melvil Poupaud, is not really a sympathetic man, is he? Or is he? Aren't you master of your own life, especially when you have a short time left... He obviously wishes to solve some "personal problems" (relations with people around him which he doesn't find as they should be) in an accelerated, black and white way. To create something clear and defined before dieing... Obviously his life had been a mess. But relations are also about giving and taking, and about accepting imperfect things in relationships. Throughout the movie you get more sympathy with Romain. The telephone call with his sister (whom he had told some unkind things just before) is moving. 'It isn't about you, it's about me". Didn't Fassbinder tell us "Each man kills the thing he loves"... Do you want to protect others by not saying you are going to die... This is altruism in an egoistic way, isn't it? The film is a melodrama, but in my case it made me think... And that's the purpose of a good film, isn't it? All the characters are well typecast and performed. At times the film is even moving, but a tearjerker it never becomes... It's not a new "Love Story". Romain's "Pardon", a sorry softly spoken, with nobody around and never addressed to the person it was meant to, was a moving moment in the film. Also the fact that Romain being gay (and his gay life style) is no theme for the plot in the film, is absolutely refreshing. Homosexuality should just be one of the many facts of life (in the lives of many). (Joris, Amsterdam)

Funny enough, I didn't expect this film to be such a great moment of cinema. I had read a couple of reviews, and most of them were rather lukewarm. I experienced this film like a soft punch in the face and the stomach, and I felt a kind of empathy with most of the characters (except maybe with the sister), because they all represent a problem in modern life. And the actors were so good at their job, without forcing it, that I didn't even think 'Oh wait, but it's Jeanne Moreau playing the part of...", etc. And there's even some humor: sometimes I laughed, and not because I felt ill at ease, but just because it was plainly funny. But it's not a comedy. It's a reflection about love, life and death. How those three can be simple, beautiful, and painful. A beautiful parable on life without any screaming, violence, shooting (like in 'Crash', for instance, which was also a beautiful film in its own way). Go and see it! It might change the way you look at life. If only for an hour or two...

After I read the critics (I was lucky I did it after seeing the movie), I felt like the people who say they're tolerant and modern were completely intolerant and conservative. They only saw the homosexuality and the nonsense story about a girl who can't have children with her husband so she asks a guest in a restaurant to have a child with her, and said it was just trying to shock the visitors. But I agree with those who say it was not the main point of the movie. I think it just tried to say that these people live on our sides and that they're the same as we are.

I accept for some people the movie can sound a little bit like a cliché or another story about dying. But for me the feelings were different. It was interesting to see a man who bears his secret on his own, because he can't open to his family and isn't brave enough to tell his boyfriend. Then he visits his grandmother and decides to tell her because as he says she's also close to death. When he's with her, he opens to her and also to himself. The scene where she confesses that "tonight I'd like to leave with you" was the most beautiful and most emotional for me.

Well, the story has it's mistakes, but maybe the plot is not the most important thing there. I just didn't care about what the director wanted to show, but about what he's actually showed. For me it was a story about a man who goes through the first shock, anger and desperation to the acceptation of the destiny with a smile on his lips.

I liked the movie very much and I think the actors did an unbelievable job.