L'emploi du temps

Ironically, I just saw this a day after viewing Abbas Kiarostami's brilliant "Close Up", a story of a man who could no longer accept the endless banalities of his life and decided to become someone else (a film director!). That man had no sense of identity about himself but he knew what he cared about and what he believed in (the power of art and cinema). That brings him one up on the hero of this story. Vincent is a man who also cannot accept the banalities of his life, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of who he is or what he really cares about. It's as if he was born out of a computer software program. He knows what he's supposed to care about: nice home, nice car, nice bank account... But his work as an investor is so deprived of any human value that he loses all sense of values. His environment; a sterile, generic, upper middle-class vacuum that could make one believe that all of France has turned into Silicon Valley with a touch of the Scandinavian, has none of the passion or warmth that one identifies with being human. He has a loving wife, but according to his 'program', he believes that he would lose her if she knew that he was no longer able to function as a cog in the machine, and provide her with the lifestyle that she has grown accustomed to.

That is the first tragedy of Vincent, because his wife really does love him. The second tragedy of Vincent, is that even though he recognizes his need for freedom, he doesn't know how to use it. He's like a man who has been released from a lifetime of imprisonment, but still hangs around the prison yard because he is unable to comprehend what might be available to him. He'd lost his job because his love for being free was more important to him than keeping his appointments, but most of his time spent in his new-found freedom is in doing the same job he'd done before: investments. The only difference now is that he likes to believe that the investments are helping developing Third World countries. He knows that there really are no investments (he keeps the money that people give him and spends it on a nifty Range Rover, among other things), but momentarily, he can feel as if he is 'somebody' to his family and friends when he tells them of this meaningful new job he (allegedly) has.

Vincent has been described by many as 'everyman', but I think of him more as 'everyman who has just stepped through the looking glass'. Instead of taking a good, hard look at himself, he somehow ended up taking a look beyond himself because he could not find a reflection. He can't even recognize how much he's patterned his children to follow the same program he did. We see him teaching his kindergarten-age son how to 'hard sell' his toys at a school fair. Later, in a fascinating scene, we see him and his family doing what most people of his class do in their free time. They go shopping in an upscale, overpriced store to buy clothing that they know they don't really need. Vincent has it all, but it fills nothing in him. His family has it all, yet they don't seem to question the fact that they rarely spend any time together.

Laurent Candet has created a beautifully somber and sober look at the price of 'success'. The film is practically drained of all color, save for blues and grays, to illustrate the life force that has been systematically drained from Vincent throughout his life. And the score, a somber cello piece, refreshingly accentuates Vincent's mind instead of his actions (like most scores do). It is like a slow-moving merry-go-round that brings on a sense of familiarity that is simultaneously comfortable and unnerving. Because what the gist of it all is: is that no one wants to spend their life on a merry-go-round. Even a comfortable one.

A middle-aged middle class family man has a mid-life crisis.

Hardly an inspiring or original idea, yet Laurent Cantet creates a quite devastating and compelling landscape of one man's internal terror - terror at his situation and complete inability to express his feelings.

Through Cantet, a combination of economic script, astonishingly sparse and subtle performances, and Pook's deeply moving musical score, takes the viewer on a journey of displaced despair and futile attempts to paper over the cracks. Recoing is captivating, his face a turmoil of quiet bewilderment and pain, and he is ably matched by Viard as his increasingly unsettled partner. The penultimate scene between Recoing, Viard and their children is quite astonishing for its tension and disquiet.

In the end, however, the final scene says it all. Recoing's face tells us everything we need to know, and he really should have won every award going for this brilliant performance. Once again the French film industry shows us all how to make films.

Playing authority figures in dark suits, the actor Stellan Skarsgard always suggests a noble melancholy, a weatherbeaten soul underneath his Swedish-oil-exec good looks. William H. Macy has made a career out of essaying the disappointments of pride-in-professionalism white men. Aurelien Recoing, the hero of Laurent Cantet's L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS, doesn't summon the instant empathy we feel for those actors. Cantet is a schematist in the style of Arthur Miller: without Miller's cornballs, but also without his visceral punch. Recoing's very body seems to be a manifestation of Cantet's two-sided patness. From the front, Recoing has some of the bland, boyish-haired handsomeness of a Skarsgard or a young Klaus Maria Brandauer. From the back, balding and bearlike-hulking, Recoing is a monster or a wreck. Cantet's movies--old-school, slowly downhill-rolling tragedies about the inhumanity of late capitalism--use Jekyll-and-Hyde dichotomies for thudding dramatic effects.

Recoing's Vincent has lost his job as a management consultant. Instead of getting another one, he drives around, hangs out in office-building lobbies and hotel bars, and generally dresses and comports like an upper-middle-class Frenchman. When he starts dreaming up a fantasy job--bringing bucks to developing markets in the Third World via the U.N.--he starts taking money from all-too-eager friends to invest. Then a middle-class mobster is onto Vincent's scheme. And from there...before you can say FARGO, the cards come tumblin' down.

Like Cantet's last movie, HUMAN RESOURCES, we are meant to hate the game, not the player, and to believe that a rigged, soulless system has robbed Cantet's characters of their capacity to experience joy on earth. But what does this character want, exactly? At one moment, he seems to genuinely wish he had the idealistic U.N. job--something, at his stage of life, with his background in the for-profit world, he could never attain. At other moments he seems to want to drive around the snowy countryside and listen to golden oldies. At still others, he seems to enjoy, a la Kevin Spacey in AMERICAN BEAUTY, the undemanding work of selling hot stereos and toasters for his mafia friend. And yet Cantet has designed the movie to make it seem as if the need for status, for patriarchal prestige, has led Vincent into the fantasy land that is his undoing. The ending--a softer landing than you might be expecting--is meant to be soul-chilling.

But what's the big whip? Everyone has dreamed of a life of aimless rambling; those who have it never seem very happy with it. (Cantet could've tested his ideas if he had bought Vincent a ticket to a lazybones' paradise.) And Cantet underlines the irony that Vincent's hustling to keep himself in non-work is in itself a more than full-time job. Cantet's movies struggle for a Miller-like inevitability, but they always fail to persuade on a human level; his crushed heroes seem more constructs than creatures. One brilliantly observant (and shudder-inducingly cruel) moment: Vincent's wife catches on to his ruse when he brings a buddy from the office to dinner--a pockmarked hustler who is too low-class to inhabit the highflown world Vincent pretends to have a berth in. The jig is up for Vincent because his wife's snob meter goes off. Too bad nothing else is as acutely examined or observant.

There is a telling moment toward the end of the new French film L'Emploi Du temps (Time Out) when the main protagonist confides to another character that he hated his previous job so much that many times while driving to a designated business appointment he would intentionally miss the appropriate exit and continue driving aimlessly , not wanting to leave his car. This behavior eventually results in his dismissal , a fact he hides from his family.

A white collar worker who has lost enthusiasm for his job , Vincent spends each "work day" sitting in public parks and eateries fabricating imaginary business meetings and appointments , talking to his wife on a cell phone and promising her that he will be home soon ; for supposed longer trips he sleeps in his car at night , interrupted at times by parking lot security who gruffly tell him to leave, What follows is a devastating tale of lies and more lies , of eroding relationships with wife , children , parents and friends. Vincent finds himself in a nether world and this film's director , Laurent Cantet , brings a chillingly cold but compassionate eye to the proceedings. Curtly refusing help from a former friend and business associate who is aware of his predicament , Vincent becomes enmeshed in a labyrinth of deceitful money making schemes. If all this seems like so much high melodrama , be assured that Mr. Cantet has painted as naturalistic a portrait of one man's modern day angst as has been seen on the screen in many a moon. Here is a filmmaker who possesses a keen eye for ordinary , everyday life. What distinguishes this magnificent film from most contemporary releases is its total lack of artifice. Each sequence in this riveting movie is so spontaneous that it convinces the viewer that what is happening is real. Much of the credit for this must go to Aurelien Recoing as Vincent. A handsome French actor , he portrays a likable fellow encroaching middle age who has lost his way ; as the film progresses , his sturdy frame becomes weighed down as much from literally running away from home and responsibilities as running from himself. Equally impressive is Karin Viard as Vincent's loving but exasperated wife. The movie also benefits immeasurably from the director's penchant for casting on professionals in supporting roles , no better an example than the presence of Serge Livrozet as a petty crook , a character who serves as an important catalyst for the film's gripping denouement. Mr. Livrozet , who acts with the authority of a seasoned professional and turns in a brilliant performance , is in real life an ex-convict who apparently lived the life he portrays on screen. This adds a verisimilitude that makes watching this movie such a sobering experience. As spontaneous as this picture feels , it doesn't lack for a meticulous production design. Elegant camera work , carefully appropriated sets ( the interiors of the Geneva office building Vincent wanders through look as though they were photographed and designed by Stanley Kubrick ) add to the chilly atmosphere. Jocelyn Pook's melancholy chamber music seems suffocatingly oppressive at first but achieves an overwhelming resonance at the story's climax. One man's isolation may not seem like an earth shaking subject for a movie.

Playwrights from Becket to Genet to Miller have traversed this area very eloquently in the past. But Laurent Cantet has fashioned a modern day morality tale that very quietly and methodically builds to a fever pitch of anger , loss and sorrow. The final scene of this film is devastating ; it will fill you with contradictory emotions. It is one of the great endings in movies. L'Emploi Du temps is a giant of a film , a masterpiece for our time.

"Time Out" seems to be the wrong translation for "L'emploi du temps". Laurent Cantet, the brilliant French director has given us a film that has a hypnotic quality and makes the viewer thinks. M. Cantet also wrote the material for the movie with Robin Campillo. This is, without a doubt, one of the most satisfying films coming from France in recent memory. As he proved with his "Human Resources", M. Cantet loves to present us stories in which characters are at the crossroads of their lives facing dilemmas related to things in the work environment.

If you haven't watched the film, perhaps you should like to stop reading now.

Vincent, the main character of "Time Out", is seen at the beginning of the film driving aimlessly through rural France, stopping at rest stops to sleep, buying things at roadside shops, or just idling around. When he calls his wife Muriel in his cell phone, we hear banal conversation between a married couple where the husband is calling home to check on his family. The only trouble is that Vincent is unemployed and he is reluctant to break the news to the family.

This man has a lovely wife, three normal children. His parents seem to have a good relationship with him. We see no sight of conflict. That is why so hard to understand what makes Vincent tick. Is it shame? Is it an ego thing? Is it his pride? Nothing seems to answer our questions because for all appearances, he is a normal person.

When Vincent hints about the possibility of a job in Geneva with the UN, his father, as well as the rest of the family believes him. Vincent witnesses a meeting in the UN building about the investment opportunities in Africa and how is that body going to be instrumental in helping the emerging economies. Suddenly, Vincent makes a plan to get some of his friends part with their savings by inventing a sure plan with incredible returns. In a way, it seems that people will be reluctant of schemes such as this one, but obviously, greed play a great deal in their minds and they give money to any charlatan. I know it first hand since I have a close friend that lost a lot of money this way, even though he understood about the risks involved.

Jean Michel, the mysterious man that happens to overhear Vincent pitching the idea to prospective investors, realizes the impossibility of the scheme. Vincent tells him about his plight and Jean Michel offers him a job helping him smuggle the counterfeit merchandise that makes a lot of money.

Unfortunately for liars, discovery is only a phone call away. Muriel finds out the truth and confronts Vincent about it. She tells her father in law, who has given an obscene amount of money to Vincent. When the father arrives at the house, Vincent flees into the night to the comforting highways that have become his best friends because they don't ask anything of him. Eventually, Vincent is seen calling Muriel from a roadside. She pleads with him to come home, but he refuses. The turmoil within his soul will not let him see the end of the tunnel. In his own mind, there is no solution for the problem he created.

The director hints to an easy solution for Vincent with an imminent suicide, but no. In the last sequence that ends the picture, we watch a Vincent dressed all in black being interviewed for a job that his father has been instrumental in securing for him. Are we seeing the truth, or are we seeing what the director has brilliantly done in order to get take us to a possibility that will register as the solution in our minds. The only thing is M. Cantet has left us clues about what really becomes of Vincent.

Aurelien Recoing, is a terrific actor. As times he reminds us of Kevin Spacey, and at times, he resembles a more ethereal James Gandolfini, but make no mistake, M. Recoing is an actor who captured the essence of the troubled Vincent. As Muriel, Karin Viard, is perfect. She gives a restrained performance. Also, Serge Livrozet, the kind Jean Michel, makes a wonderful appearance.

We await for the next work by the amazing Laurent Cantet.