Time Out

In Time Out (L’emploi du Temps)(2001), a middle-aged guy (Aurelien Recoing) loses his job with an international consulting firm in France and can’t bring himself to tell his family.  Instead, he pretends to still have that job, and then invents a new, better job in Switzerland.  He doesn’t spend his days at the local bar – he actually goes on faux business trips from which he calls his family.  He even dresses in a suit and visits the Swiss corporate HQ where he claims to be working, prowling the cubicles and lounging in the lobby while talking on his cell phone like a big shot.  The lengths to which he goes in convincing his family (and embracing denial for himself) are pathetic, then creepy and finally chilling.

Ironically, he has a smart and supportive wife (Karin Viard); we can tell that, had he told her the truth immediately, she would help him out.  He also has very successful father with the bucks to keep the family afloat until he finds something else.  But so much of his self-identity is wrapped up in his career, that he just can’t bear the thought of disappointing them.

Of course, he can’t keep up this charade forever.  There’s the matter of income, for example, which drives him to join a scam.  And then there is the web of lies that must eventually unravel.  His wife intuits that something is amiss and starts sniffing around….

Recoing is outstanding as the man inside a pressure cooker of his own making.  The great French actress Karin Viard (Polisse, Potishe, Paris) is, as always, perfect.

Time Out is a superb film because of the acting and the writing.  Director Laurent Cantet (2008’s popular The Class) co-wrote the screenplay with Robin Campillo.

Time Out is available on DVD and on Netflix streaming.  (I have not embedded the Miramax trailer because it, replete with swelling music from another film, makes the movie look heart-warming and  melodramatic, and it is neither.)