Would it be unfair to see the new film by Olivier Assayas as the capper to his unofficial “Okay Boomer!” trilogy, which began with 2008’s Summer Hours and continued with 2018’s Non-Fiction? All three films offer a spry rumination on the ephemeral nature of material objects, from trinkets collected over the years, the art that you create and, in this instance, an inherited country property.
The reason behind that somewhat glib opener is that Assayas is, with each of these films that are subtly-laced with autobiography, extremely unselfconscious about the privileged life he leads, to the point where the work may, to some, come across as a case of petty bourgeois mithering. Yet at the same time, he is someone who remains unapologetic about both his interests and the rarified circles in which he and his characters run, but in the case of the film, that thankfully doesn’t preclude more universal insights.
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Assayas avatar Vincent Macaigne plays grumble-fuss film director Paul, holed up in his rustic family stack with muso brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), radio producer girlfriend Morgane (Nine d’Urso) and his bro’s new partner Carole (Nora Hamzawi). This tight-knit squad are, it transpires, living in a museum/mausoleum whose walls, shelves and cupboards exists as shrines from a bygone era. Oh, and the reason they’re all there is because Hors de Temps (translated as “Suspended Time”) is set during the first Covid lockdown.
Yes, it is a little weird having to revisit the collective global trauma of lockdown, and you do wonder whether even someone as erudite and socially perceptive as Assayas will have anything new to add to the mountain of discourse. And in all honesty, there’s not much here that feels massively new or innovative, with Paul’s paranoia leading to a comic tranche of semi-crazed demands all sourced from “websites”.
The film ambles along in a very agreeable seriocomic fashion and does not concern itself with a contrived dramatic arc. Yet the highlights are a series of short documentary inserts intoned by Assayas himself in which he reveals memories of and anecdotes about the estate and his parents. It’s done in such a beautiful and understated fashion, that you do wonder if this could’ve made for a film in which the director didn’t need to hide his thesis behind the smokescreen of fiction.
Yet the film does remind us that Assayas is a completely natural filmmaker, and even while the script, with its focus on bickering and domestic micro-dramas (Paul spends a decent chunk of the film trying to scrub a layer of burnt strawberries from a new pot he purchased from Amazon) never coming across like a tossed-off TV sitcom. With a sudden pull back of the camera, a careful framing or a sudden emphasis away from the action, the director constantly reminds the viewer that it’s worth looking at the bigger picture suggested by this cosily intimate drama.
