Cantet's thoughtful, haunting movie is about the way a redundant businessman fills his days to conceal his unemployment from his wife and son. What scares Vincent most is not the prospect of being caught, but how appallingly easy it is not to be caught, and how the pretence and delusion of this current lifestyle is not so very different from when he was genuinely in work.

"This picture is less about unemployment and its consequences than about deception and self-deception." Philip French

"Time Out is a horrifying parable about the way work provides a nourishing delusion of existence." Peter Bradshaw

"Treated as black comedy, the movie is both terrifyingly funny and plausible... ..overlong, presumably because Cantet wants to give us some sense of a hero with time on his hands". Philip French

Director: Laurent Cantet, French, 134 minutes certificate 15. . subtitles

Starring: Aurelien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet

French director Laurent Cantet first turned heads with "Ressources Humaines", a realistic study of family dynamics set against a backdrop of industrial unrest. Now he delivers on that promise with "Time Out", which connects one man's breakdown to a wider landscape of economic downturn and colourless conformity.

Reminiscent of Michael Douglas's D-Fens character in "Falling Down", Vincent (Recoing) is a white collar worker who appears to spend his working days on the road
on business trips. In fact he has been made redundant, and the pressure to conceal this from his wife Muriel (Viard), children and in-laws drives him to immoral, desperate and ultimately criminal behaviour.

Cantet subtly reveals the humiliating minutiae of Vincent's double life - sleeping in hotel car parks, killing time in lobbies, calling home with ever more ludicrous stories without once passing judgment on his actions. Clearly Vincent is deluding himself as much as he is deceiving others. But what makes his story so affecting is the absurd lengths he goes to maintaining this charade, even after his lies have been rumbled by everyone around him.

Though Cantet's clinical direction and the unsettling Jocelyn Pook score make "Time Out" a rather alienating experience,the lanky Recoing brings a wealth of humanity and pathos to his tragically mediocre hero.

There's also a memorably sleazy performance from Serge Livrozet as a jailbird turned hotel detective with a sideline in counterfeit goods - the bitter flipside to Vincent's fading dreams of bourgeois respectability.

BACK

Philip French Sunday April 7, 2002 The Observer

It used to be quite common for lower-middle-class husbands to conceal the nature of their employment from their wives and families or, at least, be very vague about it.
This is the premise of the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Man With the Twisted Lip', in which a Kent commuter pretends to be a company director in the City when, in fact, he earns a lucrative living as a beggar.
More recently, this phenomenon was to be seen in The Full Monty where the ex-foreman (Tom Wilkinson) can't bring himself to tell his wife that he's lost his job.
This forms the whole plot of Laurent Cantet's Time Out (aka L'Emploi du Temps). Cantet's first movie, Human Resources, involved a university-educated son arriving as a management trainee at the provincial factory where his father is made redundant. It was entirely about work.
Time Out, its successor, is about not working. Vincent, a middle-ranking executive, is made redundant.
Concealing the fact from his wife and son, he tells them he's got a new job in Switzerland with a UN agency and almost persuades himself he's working there.
Vincent sleeps in his car and to finance himself he draws on his redundancy pay, borrows from his well-off father, supposedly to rent a flat in Geneva, and cons money from old friends.
The most interesting part of the movie comes when he's drawn into a scheme to smuggle fake luxury goods into Switzerland by a suave, middle-aged crook.
Persuasively played by criminal-turned-author Serge Livrozet, this accomplished fraudster has a marvellous dinner-table speech about false goods which he pretends to be pursuing rather than selling.
The picture is less about unemployment and its consequences than about deception and self-deception.
Clearly, Vincent's devoted wife suspects that there is something odd about her husband's shady activities, but plays along with his fantasy.
Time Out is overlong, presumably because Cantet wants to give us some sense of a hero with time on his hands and, like Human Resources, it's a thoughtful work that is too glibly resolved.

Cast overview, first billed only:

Aurélien Recoing .... Vincent
Karin Viard .... Muriel
Serge Livrozet .... Jean-Michel
Jean-Pierre Mangeot .... Father
Monique Mangeot .... Mother
Nicolas Kalsch .... Julien
Marie Cantet .... Alice
Félix Cantet .... Félix
Olivier Lejoubioux .... Stan
Maxime Sassier .... Nono
Elisabeth Joinet .... Jeanne
Nigel Palmer (II) .... Jaffrey
Christophe Charles .... Fred
Didier Perez .... Philippe
Philippe Jouannet .... Human resources director
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