Francois Ozon is a prolific, sometimes uneven French director whose films rarely repeat themselves. He has shifted between dark comedy, farce, and thrillers, often making films that are sexually charged and genre bending. Some of his best-known works include “Swimming Pool,” “Eight Women,” and “Potiche,” many of them nominated for awards.
“When Fall Is Coming” is mainly set in a French village in Burgundy where the film’s neat, elderly central character, Michelle (Hélène Vincent), has retired from Paris to live out her supposed golden years. She seemingly leads a simple, tranquil life, churchgoing, gardening, reading, and taking walks and picking mushrooms in the nearby autumnal woods with her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), with whom she maintains a deep bond.
However, nothing is ever that harmonious in Ozon’s world. There is always a twist at the center of the supposed concord or a dark side to a character who seems utterly benign. The visit of Michelle’s ill-tempered, phone-addicted, divorced daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), along with her beloved, sweet pre-teen grandson Lucas (Garlan Erlos), is fraught with Valerie’s resentment and turns into a debacle as she is poisoned by wild mushrooms her mother picked. Valerie recovers and blames Michelle, though the poisoning is accidental, creating an even more toxic connection between them and leaving Michelle despondent.
It is one more twist in a film that contains several of them, usually seamlessly handled by Ozon. We also discover that both Michelle and Marie-Claude worked as prostitutes in Paris for many years (a prime cause for Valérie’s rage towards her mother), and that Marie-Claude has a lug of a son getting out of prison, Vincent (Pierre Lottin). A sometimes biting Marie-Claude is wary of her son’s commitment to a new life (she sees the bar as doomed), but Michelle employs Vincent as a gardener and loans him money to open a bar. Her connection to Vincent helps partially lift Michelle from her melancholy state, but it also abruptly leads Vincent to Paris to make her happy by trying to right things with her daughter—an encounter that has tragic consequences, though what occurs is never spelled out.
Ozon’s film never quite tries to explain the behavior of his characters, though in the words of Marie-Claude speaking to Michelle about her adult children: “We failed miserably.” Still, the film emphasizes the narrative turns that take place. And though it is generally dark, some light and humor is permitted. It is a watchable thriller that is more skillfully clever than emotionally resonant.
