‘Things to Come’ a melodrama masterpiece
Published 1:30 am Friday, December 16, 2016
There is enough potential melodrama in “Things to Come” to fuel a half-year of daily soap opera: extramarital affairs, a separation, the death of a parent, the loss of youthful idealism.
It’s like a list of “most stressful events” you’re supposed to avoid combining in any given year. This wonderful French film takes a refreshing approach: It has the nerve to suggest that these events are part of the flow of life, and that main character Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) will be changed by them, but some of the change might work out to the good.
Nathalie is a philosophy professor, married 25 years with adult kids. She has a decent, fortunate life, and she knows it.
Miraculously — maybe because she’s actually thought about philosophy all these years — she is not only resilient when these life events begin piling up, she’s also hopeful and curious about what the future might bring.
If this sounds like a slim thread upon which to hang a movie, somehow it is not. Mia Hansen-Love, a 35-year-old writer-director (“Eden”) who makes movies wiser than her years, creates enough little questions and conflicts to keep us engaged.
Will something sexual blossom between Nathalie and her former student (Roman Kolinka), who now runs a commune and chides his former teacher for her leanings toward bourgeois comfort? (Yes, he talks like this.) Will Nathalie blow up at the nitwits who want to rebrand her textbook? And what will become of the cat — ominously named Pandora — that belongs to Nathalie’s ostentatious, foolish mother (Edith Scob)?
This last point is not a minor one. Pandora, who indulges her wild side when Nathalie takes her to the commune, takes on significance that we wouldn’t have guessed earlier in the movie. Pandora’s fate is no less urgent than the other characters, because this is that kind of movie.
It’s a slice of life, but baked masterfully. Like the recent Brazilian film “Aquarius,” another of the best movies of 2016, “Things to Come” looks at a woman well past the halfway point in life and finds plenty of subject matter there. And like “Aquarius,” this film is a valentine to an experienced actress who absolutely owns the part.
Isabelle Huppert has been a leading light of European cinema since the 1970s, with an occasional Hollywood project (like the notorious “Heaven’s Gate,” 1980) thrown in. A slight redhead, often cool and reserved in her style, Huppert expresses a lot with a shrug. An entire philosophy, you might say.
“Things to Come” (4 stars)
A philosophy professor (Isabelle Huppert) weathers a series of life events, but faces it all with resilience and a shrug. Mia Hansen-Love’s film is a wonderful character study that suggests that disaster need not be the end of the world — an idea embodied in Huppert’s steadfast performance. In French, with English subtitles.
Rating: PG-13, for subject matter
Showing: Sundance Cinemas
