Things to Come

Con­fir­ma­tion, were it need­ed, that Mia Hansen-Løve is one of the great­est film­mak­ers cur­rent­ly ply­ing her trade on this green Earth. Things to Come is her exquis­ite fol­low-up to her 2015 mas­ter­piece, Eden. It sug­gests that mak­ing movies comes as easy to her as speak­ing or breath­ing or recit­ing a line of verse. It’s a reflex action. Her lat­est way­ward opus is, some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, a film about cats. Maybe not direct­ly or even inten­tion­al­ly, but its sto­ry involves an over­weight black cat named Pan­do­ra who is the philo­soph­i­cal nucle­us of this rus­tic rumi­na­tion on what it means to tru­ly expe­ri­ence free­dom in our every­day lives.

Isabelle Hup­pert is at her most Isabelle Hup­per­ty (in a good way!) as Nathalie Chazeaux, a dot­ing moth­er, a suc­cess­ful and well-liked phi­los­o­phy prof, wife to an intel­lec­tu­al equal and daugh­ter to an ex-mod­el who cher­ish­es her com­pa­ny. She has mon­ey, a hol­i­day home and there are always fresh-cut flow­ers on the table. As with Hansen-Løve’s ear­li­er works, Father of My Chil­dren and Good­bye, First Love, this one takes a dra­mat­ic U‑turn at the mid-point and all these social givens are quick­ly removed from the equation.

A less­er direc­tor may have used this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn the screws and ride the teary waves of a pro­longed melt­down. But not this one. Nathalie remains calm and accept­ing of life’s unavoid­able road bumps. She choos­es not to draw on her vast repos­i­to­ry of philo­soph­i­cal wis­dom in an attempt to ratio­nalise these nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. And it’s not that she couldn’t, it’s that she knows it would offer her no real con­so­la­tion. Sud­den­ly she has gone from hav­ing every­thing and being tight­ly locked into a sys­tem, to hav­ing noth­ing and being entire­ly free.

Pan­do­ra the cat rep­re­sents her life after the fall. She can now live by her own timetable. She can wan­der in the wilds and take in the ele­ments. When Nathalie heads on a trip to vis­it one of her prize stu­dents, Fabi­en (Roman Kolin­ka), in a dilap­i­dat­ed farm­house down Greno­ble way, she’s more con­cerned with the well­be­ing of her fur­ry trav­el com­pan­ion than she is about the sweet­ly juve­nile mus­ings of her protégé. When she accepts that this new­found free­dom has its down­sides, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing late mid­dle-age, the cat becomes a phys­i­cal sym­bol of her quandary and the source of much upset.

The mag­ic of Hansen-Løve’s cin­e­ma is that she doesn’t so much tell sto­ries as she care­ful­ly col­lates details and under­stands how they are able to enhance one anoth­er when placed togeth­er. A scene in which Nathalie’s hus­band admits to his extra-mar­i­tal han­ky panky is entire­ly stripped of melo­dra­ma. Sav­age blows are dealt with a feath­erlight sense of diplo­ma­cy. It would almost be fun­ny if it weren’t so sad. Yet a few scenes lat­er, when Nathalie comes home to find a con­cil­ia­to­ry bou­quet on the cof­fee table – a weak attempt at an unspo­ken apol­o­gy, or an affir­ma­tion that this spilt is believed to be no big­gie – she explodes in a rage. Sud­den­ly, the show­down receives its belat­ed aftermath.

Noth­ing here is forced, and the title offers a no-non­sense reminder that every­thing Nathalie expe­ri­ences, we will like­ly look for­ward to our­selves. The sad­ness at the core of the film is her real­i­sa­tion that she has no answers, and that per­haps there are no answers. The film’s rela­tion­ship to phi­los­o­phy, the belief that we can ascribe mean­ing to action or that we can ever hope to under­stand the inner work­ings of anoth­er per­son, is sus­pect, bor­der­ing on the crit­i­cal. Hansen-Løve nev­er feels the need to state this – she allows the images do all the talk­ing. A recita­tion from Blaise Pascal’s ​‘Pensées’ at a funer­al high­lights Nathalie’s dis­cern­ment and intel­lect more than it is able to define the tragedy of death. Per­haps the writer/​director isn’t against phi­los­o­phy as a pure­ly poet­ic or aca­d­e­m­ic form, but she seems wary of its val­ue in the the mod­ern world.

At times the film is so cau­tious, so defi­ant­ly del­i­cate, that the mean­der­ing los­es a sense pur­pose. There’s a sense that too much effort is being expend­ed on mak­ing sure that any­thing even bor­der­ing on the over­ly-sug­ges­tive or sym­bol­ic doesn’t make it to the screen. Hansen-Løve takes the mate­r­i­al to the very edge, but choos­es not to push it over. Film­mak­ers set their own stan­dards, and aston­ish­ing though this is, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of her for­ma­tive works. It ends up offer­ing the cute sug­ges­tion that the cycle of par­ent­hood is what saves us from the tedi­um of liberty.

The film opens on a vis­i­ta­tion to a hill­top grave­yard and ends on the birth of a baby, sug­gest­ing that while some may see life as mere­ly the drawn-out process of dying, oth­ers might choose to view it as a chance to keep being reborn. Chaos is cute on the page and around the din­ner table, but best leave that to the cats.