Isabelle Huppert essays a self-possessed woman confronting unexpected changes in her life and work in Mia Hansen-Løve’s heartfelt and perceptive portrait of middle age.
No festival should be without a superb Huppert performance, and Mia Hansen-Løve’s insightful, literate and moving drama gives her sterling material to work with.
Things to Come 2016
L’avenir
Session dates and venues to be announced
Isabelle Huppert is in mesmerising form as Nathalie, a philosophy teacher in her 60s withstanding a succession of hurtful losses and tempering a lifetime’s self-assurance with admirable composure.
“A wondrously assured look at a philosophy teacher going through what might be described as a mid-life crisis… were it not for the stoic fortitude and keen appetite for life with which she responds to whatever befalls her… Mia Hansen-Løve creates and sustains a light, delicate tone while never downplaying the difficulties of an unexpected, unwanted life-change. She’s helped enormously by a supremely witty, touching, utterly truthful performance by Isabelle Huppert as the protagonist – though the rest of the cast lend more than sterling support.” — Geoff Andrew, Sight & Sound
“The film oozes with such effortless alchemy between director and actor that it’s hard to believe Mia Hansen-Løve, who also wrote the script, is not more advanced in years (the writer-director is still only 35). She does, however, draw directly from her experience of growing up with philosophy teachers as parents to provide this book-laden corner of Parisian upper-middle-class life with its stamp of authenticity – and humor…
Due in no small part to the strength of Huppert’s subtly emotive performance, the manner in which Nathalie simply carries on without carrying on (i.e.: without suffering a total breakdown) is so refreshingly… female… Ultimately she finds solace and security in her books and her ideas – in short, in herself.” — Emma Myers, Brooklyn