Time to Leave

This movie is really, really touching in parts... whilst filled with melancholy and despair, there are fleeting moments of life-affirmation and the clutching to the last few precious seconds on earth. But, all that being said, it feels far too distant most of the time, for something that should be so deeply personal it is quick to get distracted. It isolates itself with too many issues (homosexuality, surrogacy etc). I felt that this convuluted the script and it went way over its own head.

We get virtually no meaningful insight into the main character's position, whilst we care little about him due to a combination of how undefined he is and how unsympathetically he is drawn. You also get very little in a coherent picture of his reaction as scenes are slapped together with little thought about the overall picture. The scene with the grandmother works very well and the ending is cliche done brilliantly and it is an interesting enough film. Just very unsatisfying.

Compact drama has the blunt directness of a short story, yet a little more insight into Poupad’s coldly cruel lead may have been helpful; Ozon clearly wants to avoid over-sentimentalising, but the approach is distancing, even alienating at times. Ambitious attempts to introduce further plot threads fail to land because there is simply not enough time to explore them. Made semi-compelling by the performances, especially Moreau’s heart-breaker of a cameo.

Ozon shows the kind of restraint and maturity he delivered in 'Sous le sable' with another focused study on life and coming to terms with the end of things.

Felt kind of generic and unremarkable until the perfect third act, which completely destroyed me.

Top badass moment? Romain gives his sister Sophie an especially hard time and clearly had a track-record of doing so, long before he got ill. Yet when he phones her to apologise for his behaviour, (well I think that's what he was trying to do) after she writes him a letter, she was so nice about it. She could easily have told the supercilious little sod to get lost, but she didn't. I guess that's pretty badass. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations.

Really lovely, microscopic movie of self-realization.

"François Ozon's latest follows in the footsteps of familiar made-for-TV-movie terrain but does so wearing Prada shoes." - Ed Gonzalez

Definitely weaker than the other, later Ozon films i've been watching, but not bad at all. Obviously the work of a younger, less assured filmmaker. Sometimes sort of clunky, still manages to be quite poignant in places. Slight at it may be, it certainly doesn't overstay it's welcome. It reminded me a bit of Patrice Chereau's Son Frere. Between watching this and Young & Beautiful i feel like i really need to get a long green anorak.