Time Out
(L'Emploi Du Temps)
***
Cinema Releases - July 26, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. 132
minutes. Directed by Laurent Canet. Written by Robin Campillo, Laurent Canet.
Starring Aurelein Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet, Jean-Pierre Mangeot,
Monique Mangeot, Nicolas Kalch, Marie Cantet, Felix Cantet, Maxime
Sassier.
Vincent is a middle-class guy from northern France
who used to work for an advertising agency. He got fired a few months ago.
His wife, kids and parents think he quit to join the United Nations. He did
not. Vincent drives around the country listening to music, picking up documents
from diplomatic offices and memorising their details in case anyone asks
him about his job. Sometimes he stays away for days at a time, sleeping in
his car, making cellphone calls home to report estimations on how much longer
his 'business trips' will be lasting.
As "Time Out" begins, Vincent seems
to be perversely addicted to his deception -- he gets a certain thrill from
riding around all day, free to spin the wheels of his imagination and find
ways to kill hours and come up with explanations and scenarios. An old friend
reports that work makes him feel like he's doing nothing all day; Vincent
doesn't have that problem, because he actually is doing nothing, and that's
an active pursuit when you have to pretend you're doing
something.
It must look as if paycheques are still going
into the bank, so Vincent starts a scam whereby he rambles some vague nonsense
about Swiss bank accounts to former colleagues and gets them to hand over
thousands of Francs as an 'investment'. One onlooker susses Vincent and tells
him, "You know it can't last -- sooner or later they'll want their money
back." "I know," he replies, in one of the rare moments where he admits to
something -- but he doesn't take steps to rearrange the structure of his
life. In one remarkable scene Vincent's father debates the effectiveness
of UN work in the third world, and Vincent starts getting defensive -- he
references specific details as if he'd been there to see them, and speaks
with such conviction that it's as if he doesn't know that he's
lying.
"Time Out" is loosely based on the story of
Jean-Claude Romand, a man who never studied medicine but managed to pose
as a researcher for the World Health Organisation for over two decades. The
film convincingly relates what it must feel like to be lost in a long-term
lie, as Vincent becomes dominated by invisible, intangible tangles of guilt
and fear and finds it impossible to place himself in context or know what
he feels about his life. He's groping for a save haven, but he cannot keep
track of what he is or what he's supposed to be; he can't step outside himself
and attack his problem because he's too deeply buried in his
hole.
Fear of embarrassment is part of the problem --
the idea that others may never again believe the words we say is pretty scary,
and nobody likes those dreams in which we show up to gatherings without clothes.
Consider also that Vincent has not been committing a lot of specific sinful
acts, but rather living in a manner that is dishonest. It's hard to know
how to rectify something that cannot be clearly defined and that comes from
deep within the soul.
The real Romand didn't untangle his problem, but
burst out of it through violence by murdering his family. "I have never been
so free," he said afterwards. "I am seen as the lowest possible thing in
society, but that's easier to bear than the twenty years of lies that came
before." Chilling, but I think I can understand it. Murders are specific
events; a spiralling stack of lies is less clear, and is the kind of thing
that would make you lose track of your thoughts and suffocate in confusion.
Neither form of guilt is particularly desirable.
"Time Out" doesn't finish with Vincent killing
anybody, but that ending would have worked. The impressive thing about Laurent
Canet's film is that it manages to reach an extreme pitch and get into Vincent's
head simply by studying his face and letting us reflect on the deep stress
that his rising web of deceit must be causing. Aurelein Recoing, the lead
actor, is an average-looking guy with a balding head, podgy waistline and
plain face -- he drifts along, and it seems bizarre that at the same time
he never seems at ease and gives off a vibe of darkness. The simple family
confrontation of the climax would come across as low-key chitchat to an outsider,
but to those who have been watching the film, it's high drama -- the walls
are closing in. I haven't seen a gripping character study in a good while,
but here we have one.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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