Slideshow
WHEN FALL IS COMING
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY FRANÇOIS OZON
Acclaimed French stage actress Hélène Vincent is Michelle, a kindly grandmother who nurtures her garden in a quiet Burgundy village, attends church, and sees her longtime friend Marie-Claude. But don’t be fooled by the apparent tranquility — WHEN FALL IS COMING is another twisty drama from François Ozon, with a disdainful daughter (Ludivine Sagnier of Ozon’s SWIMMING POOL), poisonous mushrooms, and a son who's recently out of prison stacking up against Michelle’s peaceful retirement.
2024 103 MIN. FRANCE IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES MUSIC BOX FILMS
Trailer
Reviews
“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…Looks can be deceiving, though, as we’re reminded, and as Ozon’s movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“[A] crackling autumnal thriller…France’s most prolific filmmaker returns with another crisp delight.”
– David Opie, IndieWire
★ ★ ★ ★ “A small gem of a mystery…Hélène Vincent is a treat as a devoted grandmother who isn’t quite what she seems in this understated tale of family dysfunction…This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.”
– Wendy Ide, The Guardian
“A darkly funny French drama worth savoring…has a number of Ozonian elements that devotees of the prolific French auteur will cherish: intentional plot holes that keep things spicily ambiguous; characters who appear boringly bourgeois but are hiding secret pasts or proclivities or both; a tiny dash of the supernatural; and an irony in all its forms that runs through everything…a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.”
– Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter
“An elegant, slippery game of tonal bait-and-switch, WHEN FALL IS COMING finds the ever-unpredictable Ozon in mellow, pensive mode…Nobody is exactly who they appear to be, but Ozon’s nimble, perceptive little film takes that as a given: When winter and mortality are beckoning, the past only counts for so much.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety
“As lyrically autumnal as its title suggests…with a terrific lead from screen and stage veteran Hélène Vincent, this is Ozon in his fine-wine register, but with acerbic notes …Given the soft-focus cosiness with which cinema so often depicts older characters, especially women, this film’s dramatising of late-life content, sorrow and solitude is as subversive in its way as anything Ozon has done, and a tartly intelligent rejoinder to the clichés of screen ageism.”
– Jonathan Romney, Screen