Accident. Suicide. Murder. There’s much room inside WHEN FALL IS COMING to accommodate a multitude of facts, fictions and suspicions.
In the light of the recent so called Mushroom Murder Trial in Victoria, there’s a certain piquancy to François Ozon’s latest bon bon, WHEN FALL IS COMING.
A deliciously tantalising, ambiguous and loaded title, WHEN FALL IS COMING is a charmingly evocative portrayal of life in a French village which hides many secrets beneath its tranquil exterior.
In the quiet stillness of autumnal Burgundy, Michelle leads an isolated life, tending her garden and foraging for mushrooms in the forest with her friend Marie-Claude.
When her sharp-tongued, chip-shouldered daughter Valérie arrives to leave her son in Michelle’s care over the school holidays, Michelle sees a chance to repair their fractured bond. She has prepared a meal of welcome and celebration, ans is especially looking forward to spending time with her grandson.
But a single mistake of incorporating an indigestible ingredient sees her daughter stomach pumped, time with her grandson severed and sets off a ripple of consequences plunging her back into estrangement and guilt.
To assuage her estrangement from her own flesh and blood, Michelle gives work and wages to Marie-Claude’s son, Vincent, recently released from prison.
Hélène Vincent gives a beautifully nuanced portrayal as the grieving grandmother capable of expressing toughness alongside real tenderness.
Josiane Balasko embodies Marie-Claude’s guilt, a performance that both contrasts and compliments her co star.
Pierre Lottin, as the volatile Vincent, is both handsome and scary and brings ambiguity, a hint of duplicity, and Sophie Guillemin is perfect in the role of a pregnant police captain, portraying a police officer’s suspicion mixed with an intuitive woman who makes the choice to lower the curtain on the case.
The film explores the autumn years of life, but also the autumnal beauty of those landscapes. Nature and the rhythm of the seasons are found in the colours, the light, the sound, the water running through the canals. The film begins and ends in the forest in autumn, shot in Donzy, near Cosne-sur-Loire, an area not often filmed.
Literate, emotionally intelligent, visually opulent and beautifully played, WHEN FALL IS COMING is another fine example of the Ozon layer.
