Event
Things to Come
HELD OVER – Starring Isabelle Huppert, 2017 Academy Award Nominee for Lead Actress
French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden, Goodbye First Love) directs the great Isabelle Huppert in this delicate and affecting tale about a middle-aged professor whose carefully structured life is thrown into disarray when her husband leaves her for another woman, and who finds an unlikely new companion in a former student and radical young communist.
Nathalie (Huppert, also appearing in Souvenir and Elle) is a dedicated and demanding teacher, wife, and mother. She runs her relationships with the same rigor she brings to her study of philosophy. But when Nathalie’s husband announces that he’s leaving her for another woman, the meticulously crafted structures on which her existence is founded begin to crumble.
Truly on her own for the first time, except for a less-than-grateful cat, Natalie is daunted by this new world — until she finds an unlikely friend in a former student, the radical young communist Fabien (Roman Kolinka).
The film is infused with a generous patience. Huppert brings a quiet strength to the character of Nathalie, and Hansen-Løve films her tale with elegance and grace.
Things to Come is heartbreaking but never sentimental, wry but never ironic. It shows that, even though life may never get any easier, it nevertheless offers ceaseless opportunities for growth.
"Complementing Hansen-Love's deft writing and direction, Huppert transforms what might have been an unsympathetic role into a character who embodies universal anxieties, desires, weaknesses, and virtues."
"A film whose subtle satisfactions very much sneak up on you."
"Suffused with wry humor, vulnerability and radiant warmth, Huppert's performance captures that delicate period in life during which resignation morphs into graceful, even grateful, acceptance."
"Following her triumph in Elle, French screen legend Isabelle Huppert scores another bullseye with this delicate tale of a philosophy professor starting over."
