“Things to Come” – Life goes on [MOVIE REVIEW]

Isabelle Huppert and Roman Kolinka in "Things to Come" courtesy of IFC Films
Isabelle Huppert in "Things to Come" courtesy of IFC Films.

Isabelle Huppert in “Things to Come” courtesy of IFC Films.

“Things to Come,” written and directed by Mia Hansen Løve, arrives on the scene with a major calling card – its actress, the incomparable Isabelle Huppert. Ms. Huppert is that rare star, surely she deserves her own solar system, who bears watching no matter the material. In the case of “Things to Come,” a film about philosophy that only the French would consider making, Ms. Løve has made the journey more enjoyable by making Ms. Huppert’s character and dilemma its core.

We first meet Nathalie (Huppert), her son, daughter, and husband approaching the island gravesite of the great French philosopher and romanticist, Chateaubriand, off the coast of Brittany. For her husband, Heinz, the rough water trip is more like a pilgrimage; the rest of the family, including Nathalie, not so much, although she, like her husband, is a philosophy professor. The oblique view of this disconnected foursome is a prescient glimpse of things to come. Despite her seeming indifference to Chateaubriand, whose philosophical credo was “one inhabits, with a full heart, an empty world,” Nathalie is passionate about her subject, a passion that is missing from the rest of her life.

Nathalie is seemingly indifferent to all around her with the exception of a former student, Fabien, who holds the promise of inciting new philosophical thought. Her marriage is comfortable and her children, almost grown, need no attention. The major source of irritation in her life is her narcissistic mother who calls at all hours of the night with one anxiety attack or suicide threat after another. That Nathalie is as balanced as she appears is quite remarkable. Soon, however, that balance will be compromised with a series of personal and professional crises.

Isabelle Huppert and Roman Kolinka in "Things to Come" courtesy of IFC Films.

Isabelle Huppert and Roman Kolinka in “Things to Come” courtesy of IFC Films.

All of the actors, in large and small roles, are quite accomplished. Edith Scob, playing Nathalie’s mother Yvette, is a frightening harridan whose efforts to pull her daughter into her chaotic orbit make Medusa look maternal. Andr  Marcon as Nathalie’s husband, is her perfect match in amused indifference. Roman Kolink, playing Fabien, Nathalie’s former student whose brilliant promise has descended into conceited self-aggrandizement, is enjoyably unlikeable. All contribute remarkably to illustrating the apparent sterility of the life she has chosen.

Nathalie’s life is tangential at best. Love, as her beloved philosophers would have it, is elusive. As she reads to her class from Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise she unlocks the key to her own personality and the view of life that sustains her but also prevents her from engaging: “As long as we desire, we can do without happiness. We expect to achieve it. If happiness doesn’t come, hope persists and illusion’s charm lasts as long as the passion causing it.” The line between hope and despair is dangerously close. The film, bookended first by her husband’s driving force, Chateaubriand, and her own, Rousseau, merely serve to emphasize how they are two sides to the same coin leading to an aesthetic lifestyle devoid of actual emotion.

Nevertheless, it is the treatises of the great philosophers that see her through and provide her with the passion that lends itself to hope.

Opening Friday, December 2 at the Laemmle Royal.

 

 

 

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