SUSPENDED TIME
(Check out Chris Reeds’s Suspended Time movie review, it’s in theaters August 15. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
With Suspended Time, French filmmaker Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) makes his most personal film yet, exploring his feelings about life and love amid a global pandemic. Set and photographed in the director’s own family home in Montabé (a little over 40 km to the southwest of Paris), the movie sets a leisurely pace that belies the high emotional stakes of the narrative. Assayas himself reads the voiceover, further underlining his investment in the dramatic outcomes.
It’s the summer of 2020 and the COVID-19 lockdown is in full effect throughout France. Cinéaste Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne, Non-Fiction) has fled to the country home where he spent his early years, joined by brother Étienne (Micha Lescot, Forever Young). Each man is in a romantic relationship, and their partners—Carole (Nora Hamzawi, Non-Fiction) and Morgane (Nine d’Urso, The Successor)—are holed up with them. Paul and Étienne do not exactly see eye to eye on COVID-protection protocols, which leads to frequent arguments between the two.
Paul is much more afraid of the disease than Étienne, and also relatively content in isolation. His brother, a music critic, misses the world outside. As long as their girlfriends are nearby, the sibling conflicts never quite erupt into nastiness, but once Morgane departs as quarantine restrictions ease, Étienne and Paul become ever angrier the one with the other.
It is, as the title promises, an instant in time, simultaneously unique and universal. Assayas uses the premise to also meditate on the importance of art, memory, and how they both interact. We are what we know and what we know is at least in part a product of our surroundings. Steeped in the past as they currently are, Paul and Étienne confront personal demons within and without.
The plot unfolds gently, each beat seemingly inconsequential, yet a vital segment in the building of structure and meaning. Every one of us no was no doubt forced into profound metaphysical ennui and contemplation during the early days of the COVID crisis, and no person’s reaction was entirely the same. I relate more to Paul, whose desire to follow guidelines annoys his brother, whose own more laissez-faire attitude scares Paul.
Paul’s introverted happiness—satisfied with a small circle—is similarly familiar to me. There’s something deeply satisfying and liberating about the lack of anything immediate to do; it allows you to pursue whatever intellectual and creative passions might inspire you at any given moment. This is where the film truly resonates, leaning into nostalgia for a childlike lack of responsibility married to very adult concerns.
When, at the end, Paul tells his young daughter (who has been living with her mom) that he is leaving her something important in his will, she responds by saying, “That’s normal.” Indeed, crisis or no crisis, the human condition encompasses mundane and extreme experiences, all wrapped up together. In Suspended Time, Assayas perfectly captures that existential contradiction.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Music Box Films; Olivier Assayas; Suspended Time movie review
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