Latest news with #WhenFallIsComing
The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
We know how the mushroom trial ended. In this film, we can't be sure
In one of those strange confluences of art and real life, Francois Ozon's When Fall Is Coming is getting its Australian release just as the dust settles on the closely watched trial of Erin Patterson. The film hinges on another mushroom poisoning, this time cooked in what looks like a delicious fricassee by an elderly mother for her daughter and grandson. The film had its international premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival last year, long before the Beef Wellington story spread to Europe. Recent events do, however, lend Ozon's elusive, charming film an extra tang. Michelle (Helene Vincent) is 70 years old, living in a picturesque cottage on the outskirts of a small town in Burgundy. She gardens; she cooks and makes preserves; she has the typical French reverence for eating that means she sets the table properly even when she is alone. Her most constant companion is Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longstanding friend of similar age; the two of them go foraging in the woods, go to church on Sundays, and enjoy a wine or two. But all is not calm. Michelle's daughter, Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier), hates her and is rude and vicious and demanding. Michelle, desperate to maintain her close kinship with Lucas, her beloved grandson, tries to mollify her, but in vain. When Valerie is taken ill after their lunch, she accuses her mother of trying to kill her. Michelle wonders if that might be true. Is she losing her wits? Or does some part of her want to get rid of this bitter, bullying woman, even if she is her daughter? Wouldn't life be better if Valerie were dead? Loading It is the unspeakable question; this film asks it aloud. 'I had in mind a very good friend of mine who had an addicted son,' Ozon says. 'Her life was so difficult, and when he died of an overdose, she was relieved. Of course, she was totally destroyed. But that's the strength of nature – you are able to survive.' Marie-Claude is more inclined to blame herself for the fact that her hapless son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) has led a life of petty crime, culminating in his current prison sentence. 'She asks herself: what have we done wrong with our children? And Michelle answers, 'we did our best',' Ozon says. 'And I think Michelle is heroic to have this reaction, but at the same time she's monstrous.' Whether the poisoning was accidental is never resolved. 'Life is full of ambiguity, contradictions, it is not black-and-white,' Ozon says. 'And that is what I like to show. I like all my characters.' Even snarling Valerie, who begins as an unambiguous hate figure, has her reasons, at least in her own mind. Her sweet, elfin-faced mother made her living as a prostitute; she and Marie-Claude worked together. People found out; of course they did. Valerie can never forgive her mother for that shame. That idea, says Ozon, came to him as this poisoned family took shape in his mind. 'It was step by step. I liked the idea of a woman with a past – and the fact that the past is always coming back in your life. You can't erase it. I did a lot of research into children with mothers who were prostitutes. I realised there were two kinds of reaction. Some children punish their mothers with shame. Others understand it, accept and think their mothers were just victims of social circumstances. And try to help them, especially as they age. Because in France, prostitutes have no place. They don't have pensions or social security. Really, it's a very strong thing for spectators to respond to this in their imaginations. To make them understand the situation.' In a filmography otherwise distinguished by its variety, ageing women have been Ozon's go-to subject. 'I love old people in movies – and old women have been rendered almost invisible,' he says. 'Maybe less in France because we love our old actresses – but then, some old actresses in France don't look old any more! I love to have real actresses whom we can see are 70 or 80 years old, the idea they are beautiful as they are. And filming them in a natural way, you know.' That requires their trust, which he has built up with several of France's senior stars over the years. 'The advantage with old actresses is that the past is on their faces. So it is very touching when they let you make some close-ups. Helene Vincent is a great actress, and you see her life on her face or just in her way of walking. Just watching her can tell us so many things.' His choices still meet some resistance. 'I never say I want to make a political movie, but equally I realise that to choose two old actresses as the leads is political,' he says. Still, he adds that things are better than they used to be. In 2000, he made the first of three collaborations with Charlotte Rampling. Under the Sand is a spare and enigmatic film about a woman whose husband goes missing, presumed drowned, after going for a swim one morning. 'I couldn't find the money. Everybody tells me Charlotte Rampling is too old: she will interest nobody. And she was only 50! Can you imagine?' Loading Undeterred, he made a splash two years later with his murder mystery musical Eight Women, which featured Fanny Ardant, Catherine Deneuve and an 85-year-old Danielle Darrieux; it brought him an international audience and remains his most critically and commercially successful film. 'Hopefully things have changed now. It was not so difficult to finance this time.' Ozon has been surprised by the responses he has had to the new film. 'It is an amoral movie. I leave space for the audience to make their own judgment of the situations; I like this game with an audience. But sometimes you think much more perverse things than I have in mind; it's amazing to hear some spectators say what they have seen in the story. Sometimes I'm shocked!' He smiles urbanely; it is hard to imagine what on earth would shock Francois Ozon. 'But the film doesn't belong to me any more. It's very touching when someone puts his own obsession into your story because often people are talking about themselves, especially in a film about family relationships. Some women feel very close to Michelle. Others say that she is a monster: her daughter is suffering.' For others, the mushroom becomes a metaphor for the toxicity in the family. 'And why not? If you want to see that, why not? For me, it was more about nature – and the fact nature can be beautiful and dangerous at the same time.' Like these aged women, he adds, looking impish. 'I like the idea Michelle looks like a perfect grandmother, but she is more complex. It is kind of a cliche to idealise old people. Old people can be dangerous! Be careful!' So, is she guilty? Unlike real mushroom poisoners, Michelle never faces court, so never answers the key questions. Ozon says he knows the answers, but he won't tell. In San Sebastian, where foraging for mushrooms is part of life, audience sympathies were with Michelle; a mushroom mistake could happen to anyone. For Australians, it may be another story. Loading When Fall Is Coming is in cinemas from July 31. Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our Screening Room newsletter.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
We know how the mushroom trial ended. In this film, we can't be sure
In one of those strange confluences of art and real life, Francois Ozon's When Fall Is Coming is getting its Australian release just as the dust settles on the closely watched trial of Erin Patterson. The film hinges on another mushroom poisoning, this time cooked in what looks like a delicious fricassee by an elderly mother for her daughter and grandson. The film had its international premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival last year, long before the Beef Wellington story spread to Europe. Recent events do, however, lend Ozon's elusive, charming film an extra tang. Michelle (Helene Vincent) is 70 years old, living in a picturesque cottage on the outskirts of a small town in Burgundy. She gardens; she cooks and makes preserves; she has the typical French reverence for eating that means she sets the table properly even when she is alone. Her most constant companion is Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longstanding friend of similar age; the two of them go foraging in the woods, go to church on Sundays, and enjoy a wine or two. But all is not calm. Michelle's daughter, Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier), hates her and is rude and vicious and demanding. Michelle, desperate to maintain her close kinship with Lucas, her beloved grandson, tries to mollify her, but in vain. When Valerie is taken ill after their lunch, she accuses her mother of trying to kill her. Michelle wonders if that might be true. Is she losing her wits? Or does some part of her want to get rid of this bitter, bullying woman, even if she is her daughter? Wouldn't life be better if Valerie were dead? Loading It is the unspeakable question; this film asks it aloud. 'I had in mind a very good friend of mine who had an addicted son,' Ozon says. 'Her life was so difficult, and when he died of an overdose, she was relieved. Of course, she was totally destroyed. But that's the strength of nature – you are able to survive.' Marie-Claude is more inclined to blame herself for the fact that her hapless son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) has led a life of petty crime, culminating in his current prison sentence. 'She asks herself: what have we done wrong with our children? And Michelle answers, 'we did our best',' Ozon says. 'And I think Michelle is heroic to have this reaction, but at the same time she's monstrous.' Whether the poisoning was accidental is never resolved. 'Life is full of ambiguity, contradictions, it is not black-and-white,' Ozon says. 'And that is what I like to show. I like all my characters.' Even snarling Valerie, who begins as an unambiguous hate figure, has her reasons, at least in her own mind. Her sweet, elfin-faced mother made her living as a prostitute; she and Marie-Claude worked together. People found out; of course they did. Valerie can never forgive her mother for that shame. That idea, says Ozon, came to him as this poisoned family took shape in his mind. 'It was step by step. I liked the idea of a woman with a past – and the fact that the past is always coming back in your life. You can't erase it. I did a lot of research into children with mothers who were prostitutes. I realised there were two kinds of reaction. Some children punish their mothers with shame. Others understand it, accept and think their mothers were just victims of social circumstances. And try to help them, especially as they age. Because in France, prostitutes have no place. They don't have pensions or social security. Really, it's a very strong thing for spectators to respond to this in their imaginations. To make them understand the situation.' In a filmography otherwise distinguished by its variety, ageing women have been Ozon's go-to subject. 'I love old people in movies – and old women have been rendered almost invisible,' he says. 'Maybe less in France because we love our old actresses – but then, some old actresses in France don't look old any more! I love to have real actresses whom we can see are 70 or 80 years old, the idea they are beautiful as they are. And filming them in a natural way, you know.' That requires their trust, which he has built up with several of France's senior stars over the years. 'The advantage with old actresses is that the past is on their faces. So it is very touching when they let you make some close-ups. Helene Vincent is a great actress, and you see her life on her face or just in her way of walking. Just watching her can tell us so many things.' His choices still meet some resistance. 'I never say I want to make a political movie, but equally I realise that to choose two old actresses as the leads is political,' he says. Still, he adds that things are better than they used to be. In 2000, he made the first of three collaborations with Charlotte Rampling. Under the Sand is a spare and enigmatic film about a woman whose husband goes missing, presumed drowned, after going for a swim one morning. 'I couldn't find the money. Everybody tells me Charlotte Rampling is too old: she will interest nobody. And she was only 50! Can you imagine?' Loading Undeterred, he made a splash two years later with his murder mystery musical Eight Women, which featured Fanny Ardant, Catherine Deneuve and an 85-year-old Danielle Darrieux; it brought him an international audience and remains his most critically and commercially successful film. 'Hopefully things have changed now. It was not so difficult to finance this time.' Ozon has been surprised by the responses he has had to the new film. 'It is an amoral movie. I leave space for the audience to make their own judgment of the situations; I like this game with an audience. But sometimes you think much more perverse things than I have in mind; it's amazing to hear some spectators say what they have seen in the story. Sometimes I'm shocked!' He smiles urbanely; it is hard to imagine what on earth would shock Francois Ozon. 'But the film doesn't belong to me any more. It's very touching when someone puts his own obsession into your story because often people are talking about themselves, especially in a film about family relationships. Some women feel very close to Michelle. Others say that she is a monster: her daughter is suffering.' For others, the mushroom becomes a metaphor for the toxicity in the family. 'And why not? If you want to see that, why not? For me, it was more about nature – and the fact nature can be beautiful and dangerous at the same time.' Like these aged women, he adds, looking impish. 'I like the idea Michelle looks like a perfect grandmother, but she is more complex. It is kind of a cliche to idealise old people. Old people can be dangerous! Be careful!' So, is she guilty? Unlike real mushroom poisoners, Michelle never faces court, so never answers the key questions. Ozon says he knows the answers, but he won't tell. In San Sebastian, where foraging for mushrooms is part of life, audience sympathies were with Michelle; a mushroom mistake could happen to anyone. For Australians, it may be another story. Loading When Fall Is Coming is in cinemas from July 31. Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our Screening Room newsletter.
Wall Street Journal
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘When Fall Is Coming' Review: Autumnal Ambiguities
This year, spring has sprung at American indie cinemas with a pair of French films that are distinctly out of season, colored by the yellow leaves of autumn: Two weeks ago was Alain Guiraudie's 'Misericordia,' and this weekend brings 'When Fall Is Coming,' directed by the prolific François Ozon. Both involve murder, mushrooms, and a young man who just might be taking advantage of an older woman. But where Mr. Guiraudie is an impish auteur, using mystery and melodrama for his own playfully perverse ends, Mr. Ozon takes a slightly more straightforward approach, and his movie is the less persuasive and compelling of the two. That it is still worthwhile owes largely to the sympathetic, sinuous performance of Hélène Vincent, in the lead role of a grand-mère who may not be as simply sweet as she first appears. Ms. Vincent's Michelle lives alone in a lovely old house in Burgundy, where she leads a quiet life of gardening, going for walks and reading by the fire, her typical solitude broken only by meetings with her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko). But as the film begins, Michelle is expecting visitors, soon to arrive from Paris: her daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), and grandson, Lucas (Garlan Erlos). In eager anticipation, Michelle prepares a splendid-looking lunch—mushrooms, freshly foraged and sautéed, and a quiche of epic diameter—and then sits to await the sound of their car pulling up outside. As written by Mr. Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, Valérie turns out to be a bit of a caricature, the harried adult child who radiates stress and urban frenzy even in the tranquil countryside. She enters the movie complaining about traffic and shortly thereafter lands on the sofa to stare squarely at her phone, scarcely interested in her mother and rudely rebuffing attempts at conversation. When she ends up in the hospital due to the mushrooms served at lunch, it almost seems like a bit of karmic justice. But could it have been justice of a more deliberate kind? Devised by, say, her own mother? At lunch, Michelle claimed that she wasn't hungry, and she knew that Lucas didn't like mushrooms, which left only Valérie to eat them. The doctors and the police whom Michelle talks to see the incident as an honest mistake, familiar to anyone who has taken a chance on wild fungi. (Which is, it seems, most French people.) But Mr. Ozon delights in tweaking the drama with tacit uncertainties. Didn't we see Michelle consulting a mushroom identification chart as she prepared lunch? Could she have made such a dangerous error? Valérie neither knows nor cares—all she wants is to return to Paris, which she does as soon as she's out of the hospital, taking Lucas along with her, to the devastation of his grandmother. The film allows a moment of bare emotion for mother and daughter alike following her departure, as we see Michelle in her loneliness at home and Valérie crying as she drives away. There is, we sense, a past of great pain between these two. When the film eventually reveals more about that past, the answers are surprising. But they don't carry much depth, instead tending toward a silly, scandalizing sensibility that Mr. Ozon's generally realist approach can't convey with much credibility. Still, the film has its strengths: Ms. Vincent and Ms. Balasko make a great, world-weary team as rueful mothers, with Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), having just been released from prison. 'I hate to say it,' Marie-Claude says, 'but with our kids, we failed miserably.' Yet Vincent, at least outwardly swearing off the troublemaking of his youth, is friendly to Michelle, who hires him to do odd jobs around her property. Mr. Lottin leverages the hint of menace beneath his slick handsomeness to create a figure whose seductive ambiguity tilts toward the sinister, which the film puts to engaging use in its continuing twists. And although some work better than others, Ms. Vincent is steadfast in her commitment to a character whose morality and true affections are themselves the stuff of mystery.
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘When Fall is Coming' Review: Cooking Up a Mystery
For 'When Fall Is Coming,' the French filmmaker François Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It's there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we're reminded, and as Ozon's movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer. Ozon's efficiency and polished style are among his appeals — his films include 'Under the Sand' and 'Swimming Pool' — and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle's daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother. Michelle's life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Valérie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know. Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm's fairy-tale 'Snow-White and Rose-Red,' about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don't have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Valérie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Valérie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Valérie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle's house. 'I'll owe less in taxes when you die,' she says before taking a swig of wine. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
