Time to Leave (2005) User Reviews

We Die Alone

[tributarystu · 8/10 · 2 December 2005]

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.

Melvil Poupaud and the essentials

[Pierre-Paris2 · 8/10 · 7 October 2007]

Dying? Why? How? Do I have the chance to look at my own demise from where I'm standing and I'm given the chance, even if brief, to do what I can to arrive to the fatal randez-vous without a heavy heart. Is that possible? We live the question in painful, stunning moments of reflection. Melvil Poupaud's face is not merely beautiful but transparent. I decided very early one that he/his character and I were diametrically opposites and yet, I felt the communion, I was with him I sort of understood. I wept for him and for me, I wept for everyone I've lost and for all the ones I'm going to loose before I go. I've also decided that I like François Ozon very much. That his movies take me places in a brutally gentle way and I come out of this experiences with something new. Thank you very much.

A tender movie about life, a feel-good movie about someone dying.

[imdb-jeroen · 8/10 · 20 November 2005]

The first thing that strikes me as very unusual about this movie is that the main character is gay, and that that is not the subject of the movie, not even an issue. I don't know of any other movie like that.

Having said this, let's leave the subject of homosexuality, just like the film does, and not scare heterosexuals away. Of course the subject of the movie, saying goodbye to life, isn't new, neither original. But sometimes it isn't the story itself, but the way it is told that makes it worthwhile. To my opinion Ozon is a very good storyteller. I think tenderness, and the love for people and for life itself must have inspired him a lot.

Some scene's could be seen as provocative and politically incorrect, but the way they are woven into the story makes them credible and the way they are filmed makes them just beautiful. Ozon has a way of filming sex scene's as what they are; a nice part of everyday life.

The movie left me moved, but not sad.

Le Temps Qui Reste

[jovadewo · 4 December 2005]

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)

As soon as Man Is Born, He Begins to Die; Sometimes Faster than Usual

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 25 July 2013]

In Paris, the thirty-one year old gay fashion photographer Romain (Melvil Poupaud) learns that he has a terminal cancer and his chances with the chemotherapy are the least. His choice is to live the rest of his life without treatment. He hides the truth from his lover Sasha (Christian Sengewald) and his family and is cruel with them. He travels to visit his grandmother Laura (Jeanne Moreau) and has a small talk with a waitress. He spends a couple of days with Laura and he meets by chance the waitress again that asks him for an unusual favor. Romain returns to Paris and changes his attitude toward the rest of his life.

"Le temps qui reste" is a French movie by François Ozon with a sad story about a young photographer that discovers that he will die very soon since he has metastasis. Along his last days, he is unstable and cruel but changes his attitude after visiting his grandmother. There is no clear explanation for his erratic behavior but who could foresee how a person will behave after learning that he or she has just a few more days of life? Jean Paul Sartre said that as soon as man is born, he begins to die. But the truth is very few persons are prepared for the end. The movie also has unnecessary graphic sex scenes between Romain and Sasha totally out of the context of the drama but suitable for a soft-porn. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Tempo que Resta" ("The Time that Remains")

A beautiful cinematic experience

[Fiona-39 · 9/10 · 29 March 2006]

This film is an extremely moving experience. Ozon takes an unsympathetic, egotistical, trendy 'media' photographer, whose relation to the image is as superficial as his relations with his family. This character, played by Melvin Poupaud, who also played the main role in Rohmer's Conte d'ete (A Summer's Tale), is brutally told he has metastasized cancer and that his death is imminent. The film follows his journey. It does so with a care and a beauty that is marked by particularly beautiful shots- I would mention in particular the shots of the pink roses wilting; the children in the playground reflected in the café windows; the interest in old faces; and of course, the devastating final scenes at the beach. The interplay between this film and Rohmer's work is fascinating (recalled also through the actress Marie Riviere, who stars in The Green Ray, which also finishes with a sunset over a beach). Whereas Rohmer's sunset suggests hope for the future, and the inherent ambiguity of the image, Ozon's functions to suggest finality and closure, and at the same time, the fixity of the image - a photo, once taken, records for ever. The final moments are incredible - and by these I mean when the credits are rolling, and we hear the sound of waves washing over the beach. The inevitability of death and the cycle of life are transmitted to us through sound rather than image. Ozon's oeuvre is developing in all sorts of interesting directions and this piece points again to his place not just in the contemporary French cinematic landscape but his important engagement with European cinematic heritage (here Truffaut, Fassbinder, Varda, Rohmer, Bergman, to name only the most obvious references).

The Last Moments in a Man's Life

[nycritic · 7/10 · 2 December 2006]

Francois Ozon continues his exploration of death in LE TEMPS QUI RESTE (TIME TO LEAVE) with somewhat disappointing results. It all began with SOUS LE SABLE (UNDER THE SAND) where his leading lady, played by Charlotte Rampling, was a sympathetic character ripping apart at the seams by not accepting the disappearance (and death) of her husband, with whom she had a clearly loving relationship, I was given the chance to mourn with her and feel her impossible pain. Moments of imagined sexuality were also especially heightened, because I could believe she could mentally displace herself to an extent that both a potential lover and her ghost of a husband could be with her at the same time in an unlikely menage a trois. And that final scene on the beach as she ran towards an inaccessible image was emotionally heart-shattering: I thought I had seen the most devastating scene ever filmed.

In his most recent film, Romain (Melvil Poupaud), a fashion photographer in the vein of the David Hemmings character of BLOW UP, faints after a particularly unpleasant photo shoot. He thinks he has AIDS; the doctor informs him he has a malignant cancer and has a short time to live -- survival is less than 5 %. From then on, Romain -- already a difficult character -- proceeds to viciously alienate his sister by insulting her in a family dinner, his lover whom he first attempts to strangle in a heightened moment of sex and later throws out of their house with no explanation, and goes into a self destructive rampage in a nightclub. The only person whom he opens up to is his grandmother (Jeanne Moreau) who takes him in and briefly becomes a shoulder for him to cry on. Plus, there is a pretty waitress (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) who approaches him with an unusual proposal.

It's this proposal -- one involving a threesome not too different than the one seen in SOUS LE SABLE except for the fact that this one is real and does culminate in an uncomfortable climax -- that allows Romain to commit an act of kindness. Even so, this act is rather brittle -- he leaves his entire estate to his future son and in the process apologizes (sort of) to both his ex-lover and sister -- but never does he confront his issue head on. Ozon has one too many shots of Poupaud wallowing in self-pity, banging his head against a wall, and staring out in silence. Again, because his character is such a louse, it's too difficult to care of his fate even at the very end when the sun goes down and he goes to sleep... so to speak.

LE TEMPS QUI RESTE may sound like a bad movie, but it's not. It's almost always gorgeous to look at and has a daring sex scene that would make anyone blush. Flash-cuts in which Romain sees his younger self are one of the film's best moments, because they recall a time when Romain himself was just an innocent kid beginning to live. Other than that, this is one of the many gay movies that veer too close to restrained maudlin as its lead character goes down, unnoticed and uncared for. On the plus side, it's a quick flick -- under 80 minutes not including credits -- and doesn't linger too much in the schmaltz that would have made it a DARK VICTORY type of weepie.

The mistakes are not important

[MariaAmelie · 8/10 · 18 March 2007]

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.

Dying, slowly, too quickly, in a movie that is sometimes slow but absorbing

[secondtake · 7/10 · 5 February 2010]

Time to Leave (2005)

Besides being interminably sad, even when it has shreds of love and hope and genuine friendship built in, Time to Leave is also a tonic and a balm. It makes the worst of situations reasonable. Not good, not desirable, but imaginable, which is something, too. It's an absorbing movie at its best, but is often slow and a hair predictable, within the range of themes in films of our era.

As a movie, beyond the subject (which is what it is), there is a feeling of the ordinary even as the characters are often a bit beyond even extraordinary. The welcome spectre of Jeanne Moreau as his grandmother is great, and yet their relationship is tender to the point of incestuous. Maybe. And his love for his father, very touching, also trembles a little on the edge of beautiful liberalism. What I mean is, for all its touching, realistic touches, there are many moments that cut across the veneer that we are to believe. And it loses it's candid believability, leaning into an idealized sheen, without ever leaving it totally, into a fairy tale of some kind.

So I didn't quite settle into the whole experience very well, and watched with impatience by halfway through. Maybe his lack of denouement is ours, as well, but that reminds me of art school when people with bad art would say something along the lines of, "I wanted it that way." Director Francois Ozon may have wanted this steady trauma and despair laced with love and deflated by the banal, but he could have also wanted something that left us viewers more fully moved, entranced, enlightened, or even, alas, puzzled. I was touched, in the end, by my own feelings and fear of dying, and of being surprised by its coming too soon, and the movie did less to illuminate that as to simple serve as a reminder about it, leaving the work, and the awfulness, up to me.

Another Francois Ozon gem

[paulmartin-2 · 8/10 · 16 November 2006]

Francois Ozon is one of my favourite French directors. His artistic renditions of the human drama contribute significantly to what makes French films so worth seeing. This is his second instalment of a trilogy about death that started with the emotionally enthralling, understated Under The Sand.

Previously he has covered different genres like comedy (8 Women) and thriller (Swimming Pool). While these films have found a wider audience, I find the dramatically subdued exploration of grief and mortality in Under The Sand and A Time To Leave much more interesting and satisfying.

In A Time To Leave, Romain finds his own way to deal with imminent death. Unlike most of his previous films, Ozon uses a male protagonist. He appears to be selfish and egocentric – not overly likable. Perhaps like an essay on the human condition, it is revealing to observe how he interacts with people and attempts closure on his 'final journey'.

The film has a bit of a wandering Zen feel about it. There is no sentimentality and Romain does not burden anyone. It appears that he wants to tidy up loose ends before his passing in an attempt to find peace within himself.

Legendary actress Jeanne Moreau, playing the grandmother, has as strong a screen presence as ever (55 years after her debut). It is only with her that Romain seems to open up emotionally, and we get a glimpse of his warmer side. These scenes were very moving and felt like the emotional core of the film.

Like Under The Sand, A Time To Leave doesn't seem to be making any particular point. Neither are evangelical or proselytising a world view. Nor are they gratuitous, contrived or flamboyant. Each of them is like another essay about the human condition, done with great artistry. There are no grand sweeping statements – just one person's story. There is such understated confidence, intelligence and skill in Ozon's direction. Highly recommended.

Intelligent portrayal of introspection

[Chris_Docker · 6/10 · 17 May 2008]

Sometimes when I look at an old photo it's like pinching myself. It really happened. We really did that. It felt so good . . . Maybe recapturing childhood. Or closeness. Standing on a beach. Running towards the sea . . .

Where do we go inside when we remember? Is the 'meaning of life' in what we see and touch or in a place inside? It's a space that is the difference between physical closeness and intimacy. Between a special person and the rest of humanity. And when we connect with that place inside we see the world differently. Our lives differently.

Time to Leave opens with a young boy on a beach. He approaches the water. Then we cut to Romain as a successful fashion photographer. For a moment, he saw himself as a boy.

Cut again to Romain – he's 31 years old – being told he has inoperable cancer. He rehearses to himself how is going to tell someone else. Instead, he finishes with his boyfriend and picks an argument with his sister. Romain finds solace with his grandmother Laura, played by Jeanne Moreau. "You're like me," he says. "You'll be dying soon." Says Moreau: "To me, Time to Leave is a series of confessions about family relationships, the refusal to compromise, the refusal to bend to conventional ideas about how we can prevent our loved ones from suffering... In order to give love and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it. When Romain leaves his grandmother, who represents love to him, it's like he's running away from their closeness, their potential osmosis. ... The fact that she says to him, 'Tonight, I'd like to slip away with you,' reveals that she is quite familiar with the idea of death, she's comfortable with it, though she's not encouraging it." The emotional intimacy between Romain and his grandmother (they sleep in the same bed) is perhaps offset by the fact that he is gay. It reassures us that, however close they are, there is no suggestion of incest. Moreau gives depth and a sense of peace to the movie. She is already in her late 70's as she makes this movie. The veteran actress easily conveys a sense of being at peace with the idea of death, at peace with herself, at peace with her past, and yet still fascinated by life. "Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it - it's what makes life interesting and suspenseful. Life is extremely difficult, painful. People are always talking about happiness, but happiness - in French 'bonheur', like 'bonne heure' (literally the 'good hour') - boils down to chance. What matters are the joys - knowing how to feel cold, heat, shadows, light... Each person will interpret Time to Leave in their own way. Some will be frightened, some will reject it and others will discover things they never thought about before. I think this film is about more than death. There is a real calmness to it, a few tears, but no sentimentality." Movies about dying often need a gimmick. Else they become maudlin waiting games. Time to Leave is not as upbeat as, say, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but it has a number of things that make it different. Some of them will repel mainstream audiences – strong, gay sexual scenes, for example. Not just between Romain and his lover, but more kinky stuff in the bowels of a sex club that recalls 'The Rectum' sex-club in Irreversible. Then there' s the fact that Romain finds the keys to his own epiphany in a skilfully handled threesome (and in which he hopefully impregnates a young waitress).

Time to Leave is at times laboured, but it an intelligent film. It handles both familiar and unfamiliar emotions in a constructive, almost profound way. I say 'almost' as I'm not sure that it is quite as profound as we are tempted to believe. I felt Ozon's Swimming Pool (with Charlotte Rampling) told me more about the difficult process of writing a novel or screenplay than Time to Leave told me about the difficult process of death.

Romain's situation is unusual, so it is not easy to draw generalised conclusions. More than saying something about dying, Time to Leave maybe says something about life, the ties that bind, and the places we go to make sense of it all. The French title, Le Temps Qui Reste (The Time Which Remains), is probably more to the point than a 'Time to Leave.'

Life and death can be so simple and beautiful

[Pasky · 10/10 · 3 December 2005]

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...

A look at the time that remains

[JoaoPovoaMarinheiro · 7/10 · 20 December 2010]

This is the story about an homosexual fashion photographer facing death soon, after being diagnosed with a terminal cancer and which makes him being cruel towards his close ones.

A clever directing, a strange but effective plot and a serious performance by the leading Melvil Poupaud in a decaying process, gives this little movie an enormous impact and dimension.

A dark but elusive look at life and the very short time we have to fulfill it. It's a solid piece of work, heavy and intense, genuine and precise in creating strong emotions towards the viewer, as well as waking him up to the ephemeral and unpredictable nature of life.

countdown to his death

[denappel · 5/10 · 25 December 2005]

le temps qui reste start with an interesting plot. the main character a professional photographer gets the verdict that he suffers from cancer, and only has one month to live. his chances to survive are so minimal that he refuses chemo-therapy, what is understandable.

so the film starts with an interesting opening question. everybody can ask himself the question, what should i do when hearing that, and your interest is caught. but after that my interest decreases every 10 minutes ending with the thought, please let him die now.

how comes? ozon's main character isn't the most sympathetic guy, but the real problem for me was the pseudo intellectual psychology behind the characters, the total lack of subtlety and the exaggerated and unbelievable plot changes. for me it was impossible to understand the decisions of romain the photographer. OK romain is not really good in maintaining intimate relationships, he is arrogant and selfish (the actor does a good job here), but for me Ozon was not capable in showing all these aspects in an interesting way. he didn't added anything of value in the movie.

ozon tries to show aspects of today's egoism, of people who are incapable of talking about feelings, about relationships. he shows how people can be incapable of changing, letting go their pride and excuse themselves. but there is no evolution in the movie. it leads to nothing, only to his death, and the one dimensional character of romain couldn't keep my interest. if you would like to see a poetic movie about life, i would suggest not to pick this one.

A Study in Aloneness and Despair.........yet.....

[arizona-philm-phan · 17 February 2007]

(Message to the Director:...Ah, Francois......Francois, if your intent was to give us a heart shatteringly sad tale, you've succeeded only too well. Yet, in the end, you have also given us---in Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's character of Jany---a glimpse of Romain's redemption.)

This is one of the most despairingly heart-rending films you are likely to see: the tale of a dying young man who, perhaps unwisely, decides not to share his impending death (and choice not to fight overwhelming odds) with anyone close to him. This is true for everyone, except a beloved grandmother, and goes even so far as to include driving away a lover.

The resulting loneliness and feelings of loss this amazing French actor (Melvil Poupaud) causes us to share with him are overwhelming; at times we are struck almost physically---not just emotionally. As we watch him, body wasting away (for that is really what the young actor did in taking on this role), we almost painfully feel our own bodies contracting, diminishing. There are moments when we want to hit him for his behavior, though even more there are instants we want to take him into our arms.....let him know that he is not alone.....that some way, and at such times, we are all connected.

Jump to the Final Scene: Romain has withdrawn from the world......we then see a 'sun-setting' world withdraw from him (yes, you do actually see that----the symbolism is heart wrenching).

PS--Letting you in on a little secret, after viewing this film one has only to look again at the cover of the DVD.......to unerringly 'know' how Romain's life truly ends / begins. All becomes clear.

PPS--Obviously I strongly disagree with viewers who, principally, can find only the negative in Romain. He is (was), after all, only too human.

****

ruined for me by a plot device

[wbryant1976 · 7/10 · 25 July 2006]

Possible spoilers beneath. i agree that Ozon is a great filmmaker -- Under the Sand and Swimming Pool are masterpieces in their way. but where did the outrageous plot line about Romain impregnating a random woman come from? So many gay movies are so afraid that life is meaningless without the hope of procreation, so there is inevitably either a drunken night in which our gay hero sleeps with a woman who ends up pregnant; or a plot twist in which we encounter a friendly infertile couple who need our hero's seed. why would Ozon invoke such a cliché in a movie like this? i wanted to think it must be a subversive appropriation of the convention, but in fact i think it's just lame.

A fantastic movie

[ranarivelo · 9/10 · 8 August 2006]

How someone can NOT like this film is beyond me. The emotions the lead character goes through feel completely genuine. This is one of the best movies about dying that I've seen. The lead actor is awesome, and the emotions and physical transformation he goes through are very realistic. This movie was out for about 2 weeks here in California and then it disappeared. Maybe it's too depressing. I don't know. It will make you think though, and occasionally, it will make you laugh, because when you know you have nothing to lose, you speak your mind, as the lead character does.

A great film.

a disappointing film, compared with Ozon's other films

[bearandcat1982 · 6/10 · 18 November 2005]

I have seen this film "le temps qui reste" last night. I could not wait to see this film, having seeing most of his other films. But after i have seen it, i am a little disappointed. Not only is this film short, but also the performance of Melvil Poupaud, according to my opinion, is not so convincing. In this film, he plays a gay photographer who has got the cancer,but i don't think Melvil Poupaud has depicted well this character.In fact, his performance is a little bit artificial.Besides, the story told by this film is not so attractive as those of Ozon's other films,such as 5*2, sitcom, les amants criminels,etc. Generally speaking, this film is so average that it can not match up Ozon's talent and reputation.

The Poetics of Dying

[gradyharp · 10/10 · 30 November 2006]

François Ozon (Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women, Swimming Pool, 5X2) is one of the most fascinatingly talented French directors on the scene today. His films have a simplicity, a direct approach to the mind and the heart, and an extreme respect for both his actors and his audience - factors that allow him a means for communication that is rare and proves he has few equals. In LE TEMPS QUI RESTE (Time to Leave) he addresses that earth-shattering moment of being informed that death is imminent and shows us how one character copes with that information and how it changes his remaining days and his history of relating to others.

Romain (Melvil Poupaud) is a handsome and successful fashion photographer who is gay, has a lover Sasha (Christian Sengewald), but is somewhat estranged from his family. For some reason he cannot relate to his pregnant sister Sophie (Louise-Anne Hippeau) despite his mother's (Marie Rivière) pleading and his father's (Daniel Duval) distance. During a fashion shoot Romain faints, is taken to the doctor (Henri de Lorme) who informs him he has metastatic cancer for which there is little hope (except for chemotherapy and radiation therapy) that he will live past a few months. Romain opts to go without treatment and begins to face his remaining life with silent gloom. After a very sensuous sexual encounter with Sasha (Ozon holds nothing back in depicting this!), Romain decides to quit his job, tells Sasha to leave, separates from his family, and visits his beloved grandmother Laura (Jeanne Moreau, as exciting an actress as ever!) who shares her philosophy of living and dying and bonds even more closely with the grandson who mirrors her own life. Her sage wisdom is what grounds Romain.

Romain, alone, travels about France, meets a sweet couple in a café - Jany (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and her husband Bruno (Walter Pagano) who are unable to have children - and after consideration Romain consents to comply with their request to impregnate Jany but only if Bruno is part of a ménage a trois in the process. The couple discovers Romain is dying after Jany becomes pregnant and Romain for the first time is able to show tenderness in his relationship with them. Somewhat changed in outlook Romain returns home, has a tender talk with his father who accepts his son's sexuality, attempts a reconciliation with Sasha unsuccessfully, and even responds to a letter from Sophie. His missions completed he travels to the ocean where the film ends in one of the most beautifully subtle, tender and genuinely realistic ways.

In every way this film is satisfying. The actors are to the person excellent with Melvil Poupaud, Jeanne Moreau and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi particularly outstanding. But the kudos go to writer/director Ozon who once again proves that his enthusiasm for his field of art is boundless. He is one of the more important figures in cinema today. A brilliant, quiet, immensely satisfying film. Grady Harp

A typically french look at the complexities of life

[ikanboy · 7/10 · 9 June 2007]

A gay man finds out he's dying of cancer. How many times have we been here before? Yet this movie decides to avoid most of the clichés and give it to us "straight." The dying man has little to recommend him. He is cruel, vindictive, self centered, aloof, and why should we care? Unwilling to share his death with anyone, he alienates his family, lover, and anyone who tries to touch him emotionally. Is he just projecting his anger at dying? Or has he always been this way? We get some clues, but they lead us nowhere. He has long alienated his sister, and we are left to wonder why. This movie's strength is that it offers no excuses or rationale for it's protagonist. Too many Directors would have thrown in clues for us to look for, like crumbs for Hansel and Gretel, but not this one. He is complex, contradictory, annoyingly so! He is sweet with his grandmother, but cruel to his sister and lover. The beauty of it is that the audience can create their own delusions about him. It's a Rorshach test! In the end he makes sure his seed will carry on, by giving it as a gift to a couple, strangers to him, whose male is sterile. Then he makes sure they sit through his bequeathing everything to the unborn child. At several points in the movie he has made it clear that he hates children. Is this the root of his self hatred? His own homophobia? Does he yearn deep down to be "normal" in a world in which he is not? See how much fun it is to imagine motives, and not have them crammed down ones throat? But in the end he dies alone, with only his grandmother privy to his secret, and in his final act he retains his cruelty, his desire to hurt those he has some unknown grudge against. His family is left to agitate about why.

the grandson of "Cléo De 5 à 7" (1961)

[dbdumonteil · 8/10 · 5 January 2006]

"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

The death of a photographer

[Bolonais · 7/10 · 7 June 2006]

THESE REMARKS CONTAIN SPOILERS It's Romain's profession to catch the primped parade of fashion models on his Nikon. He rides at the top of a jet-setting business and can afford himself some of its hedonistic self-indulgence: a stylish Paris loft, tony gay clubs, fast expensive cars and Sascha, an in-house lover who supplies erotic amusement. During a rooftop shoot he falls into a faint and wakes to the diagnosis of a tumor that has metastasized beyond cure, leaving him with a few months left to live. After some wrenching tears on a park bench Romain's first response to the devastating news is to end his relationship with Sascha, of whom he was beginning to tire anyway, without ever telling his boyfriend of his mortal illness. This hard-hearted first farewell marks Romain's decision to stage his death alone.

I deliberately write that Romain "stages" his last days. Accustomed as a fashion photographer to total control over a setting, Romain continues his leave-taking on his own terms. His silence on his condition allows him to focus his final moments on those who have meant most to him, less on himself. Those moments, like his snapshot record of them, are a photographer's farewell: pointed on his subjects, a final glimpse into their real candid selves. In his parting embrace of his father - only Romain knows that the gesture is the last - Romain can finally see with clear eyes the two-timing old man who has stayed with his wife all these years because, in the end, he loves her. Romain can redeem an earlier unwarranted attack on his sister (he called her a baby-finessing seductress) with a moving telephoned statement of his tenderness for her. He can watch her pass her quiet elation to her child, unmarred by worry or even the knowledge of his distant presence. In a last encounter Sascha tells Romain that he does not want to humiliate himself by doing Romain sexual favors, as Romain had asked. It is a parting shot of candid honesty - possible only because Sascha remains ignorant of his old boyfriend's sickness - that Romain can accept without resort to bullying nastiness or eliciting pity. Romain, in his detached silence, has given his father, sister and friend the most generous of farewells by allowing them to be themselves. Only to his grandmother (Jeanne Moreau in unsurpassed grandiloquence) does Romain tell of his illness - because she's going to die soon herself, he says. Her natural camera pose is of a person herself close to death; she will love Romain as he is and not mourn him.

Romain's self-staged farewell spawns a legacy that includes more than acceptance and forgiveness. A waitress (a wonderfully bewildered Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) asks him to stand in for her infertile husband. The ludicrous menage-à-trois of impregnation that follows may be over the top, but is in keeping with Romain's careful, disciplined staging of his death rite. It is part of the drama of Romain's last days that will now have even produced a son.

In addition to Romain's photographic record of his farewell (part of which puzzled me: an early disturbing still, just after their break-up, of Sascha asleep with blood stigmata on his temple: the wounds Romain inflicted in dumping him?) François Ozon punctuates his film with the record of Romain's flashbacks to his childhood. In one especially amusing scene Romain, as a little boy, urinates into a vessel of holy water. These flashbacks are Romain's encounters with unencumbered innocence and with the now-lost intimacy with his sister, as he tries to close the circle of his life. He can recover that intimacy and innocence only in keeping his disease from those close to him - their sorrow would only hinder his intentions. In his refusal to be their patient, he has become their confessor. The film senses the deep irony of a dying man whose unaffected portraits of people special to him are the product of his deliberate design. The self-centered hedonism of the fashion photographer (which has destroyed Romain's intimacy with his sister) curiously proves the wellspring of Romain's theatre of forgiveness and redemption. If his pleasure-seeking ways had once kept him aloof from his family and lovers, he will in death take the barriers down, ironically enough by putting up a last barrier of silence. (Romain's dream of sexual contact with his doctor is a mark not of his lust but a simple desire for intimacy.)

The movie is wise in making no apologies for Romain's pleasure-seeking life as a successful fashion photographer, though the decision to make him gay is perhaps an unfortunate stress on an epicurean stereotype. Melvil Poupard portrays Romain with the right touch of wry ennui (emaciated at the end), as one who accepts his ways even as he tries to see past them into understanding and acceptance of those close to him. He stages his death with a demonstrative self-consciousness by returning to the child at the edge of the ocean with which the movie began. The dying Romain has an ice cream, throws out his cell phone, grants himself a last swim and lays himself on the beach as if on a bier. He hands a beach ball to his boyhood self, their only "contact." After silent farewells to so many others, Romain in this last gesture at last takes leave of himself, alone in the death he himself has staged.

Ozon's Masterwork

[dhlough · 10/10 · 23 June 2006]

François Ozon's films produce a cool admiration. From naturalism (Under the Sea) to visual sophistication (8 Women) – his work creates distance. This may be a "French thing"; their films move more naturally towards philosophy than drama. His stunning Time to Leave (Le Temps Qui Reste) has delicately meditative moments, yet it's hard to remain aloof.

This second of a proposed trilogy about grief is a masterwork. Ozon may be a cool observer, but there's no detachment in the story of Romain (the extraordinary Melvin Poupaud), a gay photographer with terminal cancer. We get little of his pre-diagnosis life – he seems to have always been a bastard – but we ride his volatile emotions to the end. He tells almost no one of his illness; pushes away his family, his lover; acts cruelly. Ozon neither glorifies nor excuses these actions. Yet the accretion of details as Romain hurtles towards our common end creates a tense empathy in the audience. We may disagree with Romain's behavior, but we understand his every exploit.

Ozon's screenplay flows with incisive scenes; one of the best involves Romain's grandmother (Jeanne Moreau), herself close to death. Better still is the director's handling of sex scenes: a brief, violent one with his lover after he has been diagnosed, another with a woman and her husband who've asked him to help them have a child. Movie sex scenes are perfunctory; when one has heat and acuity, real eroticism, they're exhilarating. Ozon's are more – they're resonant; the threesome in particular, because we're profoundly aware of what's at stake for all the players.

Slated for release in the middle of summer movie madness, Time to Leave is an anti-blockbuster. Who wants to see a film about the death of a gay hedonist when there are superheroes out to save the world? I suppose only those who'd like to understand what it is about that world that's worth saving.

Profund subject told with a blandness that disappoints for the most part.

[wemullin · 6/10 · 27 July 2006]

This film is not without redeeming qualities. The theme is profound: what does one do when death is near.

Without speaking to details which might spoil a viewing, let me say that very little the central character, a professional photographer, does makes sense...except, perhaps, as a symbol of a dying man trying to recapture a life that is discarding him. For the most part, however, his actions don't elicit sympathy or compassion from the viewer.

Aspects of the scenes with his grandmother are puzzling and strange. Our dying photographer clearly loves her, but the most profound thing he says is to call attention to how much they are alike: she is old and presumably hasn't many years more to live and he is dying. In reality, she is vital and filled with life.

There is one truly beautiful sexual/love scene which is very tenderly filmed. It is one of the few times I had any compassion for the lead character.

Near the beginning we suspect how this film will end. With the right direction death scenes can be profound, but this ending is just boringly predictable and visually disappointing.

Ozon's worst film

[howie73 · 4/10 · 27 October 2006]

Following the disappointing 5x2, French auteur Francois Ozon felt the need to release this slight and poorly directed meditation on death. The biggest problem with this film is that it isn't a feature film. Had it been 30 minutes long it might have worked, but Ozon chose to stretch a thin premise beyond credibility. What should have been a film worthy to follow Under the Sand is really an embarrassing failure for Ozon.

Firstly, the film isn't that cinematic. Ozon is fixated on close-ups which belong to TV soap-operas rather than widescreen French cinema. The use of music is also obtrusive. We don't really care for the dying Romain. We may feel pity for him, but his stubbornness and arrogance make him an unsympathetic figure. Yes he is an anti-hero but it feels like a French cliché. Ozon also cuts away from emotive scenes as if they embarrass this film's high art cinema credentials. The reality is Ozon is afraid his material too sentimental.

The film's 77 minute length also glosses over many characters. Romain's mother is not really given a chance to show her depth. Moreau's grandmother role feels like the typical French diva. She brings too much baggage to the role and submerges Romain's presence in their scenes.

But perhaps the biggest problem of the film is the use of clichés. The sub-plot of the waitress and her husband is cringeworthy in its soap-operatic naffness and I was amazed Ozon even contemplated this strain. I also felt the main premise of the story was unoriginal - the life affirming nature of heterosexuality. Even the ending, which recalls Sand and 5x2, is a cliché with the setting sun suggesting death. A film that should never have been done, but perhaps a revealing insight into Ozon's eccentricity. All in all, a sombre soufflé.