Time Out (L'Emploi du temps)

James Berardinelli

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The loss of a job - a sadly commonplace event in today's turbulent economic climate - is not just a blow to the wallet, but a severe hit to the psyche. For many individuals, their entire self-worth is entwined with their employment, and the elimination of one often leads to the erosion of the other. Time Out, the second feature from French director Laurent Cantet (his debut was 1999's Human Resources), examines this relationship by meticulously showing the downward spiral of the lead character, a man who loses his grounding (and perhaps a piece of his mind) when he joins the ranks of the unemployed.

The film, which has been widely lauded on the film festival circuit, does something that true cineastes love - it relies upon our intelligence to decipher clues rather than drowning us in a flood of redundant exposition. Cantet provides just enough background to give a sense of who the characters are, and, following a key sequence late in the film, he includes an ellipsis that forces us to make deductions about how the characters have developed and changed during the intervening months. No Hollywood offering would ever take this approach, but, in this context, it is an effective method to provide an epilogue that reveals yet another facet of a three-dimensional character.

Vincent (Aurelian Recoing) is an average guy. He has a middle-class lifestyle that includes a nice home, three children, and an attractive wife, Muriel (Karin Viard). Then, for reasons that are not made clear by the screenplay, he loses his job. (In other words, we don't know if he is fired or, as the euphemism goes, "downsized".) In large part because he cannot bear the shame of revealing his circumstances to his wife, kids, mother (Monique Mangeot), and overbearing father (Jean-Pierre Mangeot), Vincent pretends that he's still gainfully employed. In fact, he acts as if he's about to get a new, lucrative position working for the U.N. in Switzerland. In order to continue providing an income for his family, he starts a scam and bilks money from his friends. He then meets Jean-Michel, a charismatic crook who earns money by selling knock-offs, and the two form an uneasy partnership. But Vincent is restless, and feels uncomfortable about the criminal lifestyle he is embracing.

Time Out moves at a leisurely pace, eschewing the rapid edits and rat-a-tat approach of so many mainstream American motion pictures. The intent is to draw the viewer into Vincent's mindset, and the style works. There are many aspects of Vincent's life and circumstances that we don't understand, but, as the movie progresses, we begin to see things from his perspective, and his gradual descent into despondency is conveyed in a vivid manner. A share of the credit for this must go to director Cantet, who refuses to rush things in order to shorten the running length. Equal kudos is deserved by actor Aurelian Recoing, whose low-key performance as Vincent is both credible and powerful. Recoing, who looks a little like a cross between Billy Bob Thornton and Kevin Spacey, is so precise in his portrayal that there are times when we almost feel that we're watching a documentary.

In its treatment of the dehumanizing and ego-destroying process of unemployment, Time Out offers an exploration that is more accurate than anything I have seen in an American film. The Hollywood analog is Falling Down, the Michael Douglas thriller that sees madness and bloody revenge as the natural results of job loss. Time Out acknowledges that some of the same psychological underpinnings are at work, but the results are more in keeping with what happens in the real world. Instead of using Vincent's situation as an excuse for external conflicts, Cantet takes us into his mind, and lets circumstances play out there. For those with the patience to sit through this kind of unhurried motion picture, Time Out offers a compelling character study of an individual under the kind of strain we can all relate to.

From movie-reviews.colossus.net

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