The title When Autumn Falls suggests a wistful, lyrical affair — and if that’s the sort of French drama you’re after, then the first 15 or so minutes should suit you fine. But it’s not long before director François Ozon’s taste for subversion kicks in, very bracingly.
Ozon (Under the Sand, Swimming Pool, the recent The Crime is Mine) excels at roles for actresses of all ages; here he creates a magnificent part for Hélène Vincent, a revered doyenne of stage and screen. She plays Michelle, an elderly woman living in the Burgundy countryside. Apart from spending time with her friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), Michelle’s greatest joy is seeing her young grandson. But she has a thorny rapport with her resentful daughter (Ludivine Sagnier), which only gets worse when the mushrooms Michelle has cooked for lunch turn out to be poisonous: carelessness, incipient dementia, or dangerously revealing Freudian slip?
What gives the spice to Ozon’s recipe is its heady uncertainty. At the centre of the drama is a crucial incident that we never witness, but which resonates through all that follows. We don’t see it coming when the film shifts registers, becoming a semi-thriller with distinct flavours of Georges Simenon or Claude Chabrol. It is equally elusive about Marie-Claude’s taciturn son, newly out of prison; up-and-coming face Pierre Lottin, playing his cards very close to his chest, is an out-and-out revelation.
The whole cast is terrific — including Sophie Guillemin’s blunt, canny cop — but, above all, the film is a gift for Vincent, who unpacks Michelle’s complexities with wonderful sensitivity and brio. It’s not least thanks to her that When Autumn Falls succeeds at once as an empathetic psychological portrait, a feminist drama and an emphatic anti-ageism statement — all executed with the subtlety, craft and sheer sly cheek that are Ozon trademarks.
★★★★☆
In UK cinemas from March 21 and US cinemas from April 4
