Movie Type: Psychological Drama, Social Problem Film
Themes: Crisis of Conscience, Down on Their Luck, Crumbling Marriages
Main Cast: Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livozet, Jean-Pierre Mangeot, Monique Mangeot
Release Year: 2001
Country: FR
Run Time: 134 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
French director Laurent Cantet's sophomore effort is a somber and complex meditation on work -- specifically, how work has become the defining feature of the contemporary individual as well as the quintessential symbol of quotidian despair. The movie tells the story of Vincent (Aurelien Recoing), a middle-class family man recently fired from his drab, middle-management job. Unable to tell his family about his firing, Vincent spends his workdays driving around the French countryside --"business trips" he tells his wife -- keeping intact the reassuring routine of going to work and coming home to his wife and kids. As his family grows suspicious of his evasive behavior, Vincent is forced to spin a new tale, pretending to get a job working for the U.N. In a bid to keep the money coming in, he recruits old friends to invest in an imaginary emerging-markets investment scheme. Vincent also falls in with Jean-Michel (Serge Livrozet), a black market dealer whose ignominious past serves as an ominous warning for Vincent's present course. Despite his efforts to maintain an undisturbed surface, Vincent's wife begins to suspect something amiss. As the lies pile up and the questions from his family mount, Vincent loses control of his fragile double life, leading to a poignant conclusion. Cantet's film premiered at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
Review
Precise, deliberate, and resolutely political, Laurent Cantet's L'emploi du temps (released in the U.S. as Time Out) is a remarkably assured film for a second-time director. Betraying a preoccupation with work as a pet theme -- his debut feature, 1999's Human Resources, also revolved around the subject -- Cantet crafts a searing examination of the ways in which a societal emphasis on work has cramped individual freedom and distorted human interaction. The movie stars Aurelien Recoing as Vincent, a man recently laid off from his anonymous, middle-management position. Poker-faced throughout much of the movie, Vincent is an ultimately pathetic figure in a glumly realistic landscape. More a nuanced critique than a raging polemic, the movie assails the bourgeois complacency that allows corporate orthodoxy to eclipse all other values. What makes the movie remarkable is its ability to cloak such a political point of view in a story rich in ambiguities. While Vincent's bid to free himself from the suffocating grip of his job is clearly the movie's departure point, his pathetic wandering during his listless days off nonetheless suggests the oddly comforting role employment plays in defining one's place in society. Cantet's technique is subtly expressive: his camera captures a wintry world of glass and antiseptic modernity without resorting to strident stylistics. His handling of actors is equally superb -- the movie's depiction of middle-class family dynamics is unerring. In L'emploi du temps, Cantet has made the rare political film whose agenda is seamlessly subsumed in an engrossing human drama. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
Cast
Aurélien Recoing - Vincent
Karin Viard - Muriel
Serge Livozet - Jean-Michel
Jean-Pierre Mangeot - Vincent's father
Monique Mangeot - Vincent's mother
Nicolas Kalsch - Julien; Marie Cantet - Alice; Felix Cantet - Felix; Maxime Sassier - Nono; Elizabeth Joinet - Jeanne; Nigel Palmer - Jeffrey; Christophe Charles - Fred; Didier Perez - Philippe
