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For \u201cWhen Fall Is Coming,\u201d the French filmmaker Fran\u00e7ois Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It\u2019s there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we\u2019re reminded, and as Ozon\u2019s movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer.<\/p>\n
Ozon\u2019s efficiency and polished style are among his appeals \u2014 his films include \u201cUnder the Sand<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSwimming Pool<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude\u2019s son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle\u2019s daughter, Val\u00e9rie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Michelle\u2019s life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Val\u00e9rie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol<\/a> (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm\u2019s fairy-tale \u201cSnow-White and Rose-Red<\/a>,\u201d about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don\u2019t have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Val\u00e9rie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Val\u00e9rie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Val\u00e9rie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle\u2019s house. \u201cI\u2019ll owe less in taxes when you die,\u201d she says before taking a swig of wine.<\/p>\n Val\u00e9rie is unlikable, almost cartoonishly so, and as wholly ordinary a villain as she is a useful one. Sagnier conveys the character\u2019s awfulness with pinpricks of humor \u2014 Val\u00e9rie never seems in on the joke \u2014 and with sharp, controlled gestures and expressions. When Val\u00e9rie\u2019s eyebrows arch high in disdain, her mouth forms a humorously matching frown. Sagnier\u2019s performance brings her character (a materialistic city dweller who hates the country) to the edge of caricature, and so does Lottin\u2019s. His Vincent is an oafish country boy, and too loud, too big, too crude. These performances give the story a frisson of instability while the more naturalistic ones of the actresses playing the mothers are soothingly familiar.<\/p>\n Ozon uses the contrasting acting styles \u2014 the realism pulls you in while the hyperbolic turns keep you at bay \u2014 to emphasize the differences among the characters. It\u2019s easy to admire how he puts them in play and the facility with which he marshals the other elements, even if all these parts never satisfyingly fall in line. To a degree that\u2019s because he isn\u2019t especially interested in mystery, per se; what concerns him are the mysteries of other people, their ambiguities, and questions of nature, nurture, freedom and responsibility. He asks what do parents owe their children as he skims the surface. There\u2019s pleasure in watching him do so (his surfaces are<\/em> appealing), in a story about ladies who are old but not necessarily sweet.<\/p>\n When Fall is Coming<\/strong>
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n