When Fall Is Com­ing – first-look review

In the spir­it of his cin­e­mat­ic idol, Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder, French writer-direc­tor François Ozon works at a rate of knots and makes sure he punch­es out at least one film a year. Yet unlike Fass­binder, there’s very lit­tle the­mat­ic or styl­is­tic con­ti­nu­ity between the films, and he nev­er seems to be able to raise the qual­i­ty above the stan­dard of the admirably decent. They often intrigu­ing and com­pe­tent­ly made, but these are not works made to set hearts aflame.

When Fall Is Com­ing is anoth­er such con­fec­tion, a lit­tle like the ​“granny cake” whipped up by its hero­ine Michelle (Hélène Vin­cent) as a treat for vis­i­tors, duti­ful­ly wrapped up in tin foil and intend­ed as a com­fort­ing taste of home. Sure, Ozon spikes the recipe with a few more acrid flavours and tex­tures, but in the main this is one that slides down a lit­tle too eas­i­ly, with an over­whelm­ing sweet­ness that sub­sumes the oth­er notes.

Michelle is intro­duced attend­ing a church ser­mon, then head­ing home to tend her gar­den and pick some squash­es for a hearty soup. She dress­es in shag­gy jumpers, den­im skirts and big walk­ing boots – a true fix­ture of the coun­try­side in her quaint lit­tle cot­tage. She picks up her best pal Marie-Claire (Josiane Bal­asko) in order to dri­ve her to the local jail to vis­it her son Vin­cent (Pierre Lot­tin), and then the pair go mush­room pick­ing ahead of a sur­prise lun­cheon for her vis­it­ing daugh­ter and grandson.

Fam­i­ly is vital to Michelle’s sense of well­be­ing, though daugh­ter Valérie (Ludi­vine Sag­nier) is nat­u­ral­ly hos­tile to her doing moth­er. Grand­son Lucas (Gar­lan Erlos) doesn’t real­ly under­stand from where this hatred stems. Yet the fam­i­ly vaca­tion is short lived, as on day one Michelle acci­den­tal­ly serves up a batch of poi­so­nous mush­rooms and near­ly kills Valérie (the only one of the three who par­takes). Noth­ing, ulti­mate­ly, comes from this acci­dent except the expan­sion of ani­mosi­ties, and Michelle fears that she’ll nev­er get to see Lucas again.

At one point, Michelle is seen nod­ding off in an easy chair with a Ruth Ren­dell paper­back on her lap, and it offers a lit­tle sign as to where things are head­ed in the film’s sec­ond and third acts. Rev­e­la­tions about the past rise to the sur­face; going all out to help a friend in need often results in oth­ers suf­fer­ing; the rav­ages of nature and biol­o­gy tight­en their grip.

When Fall Is Com­ing strays into some inter­est­ing, eth­i­cal­ly thorny ter­rain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleas­ing solu­tion rather than to have things become too dark or alien­at­ing. It’s teeters on the Chabro­lian for a time, but lacks the iron­ic wit and cyn­i­cal edge of the mae­stro, set­tling instead for some­thing that more naked­ly audi­ence-pla­cat­ing, and slides down more like a granny cake and less like Michelle’s dodgy mush­room haul.