Time To Leave Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

angst à la Frog

No Anglo-Saxon filmmaker would be able to get away with a work like this without being laughed out of the business; but the French can do it, somehow.

Here you have an obnoxious and contrary, utterly self-centred and unapologetically arrogant protagonist dealing with the sudden and unexpected diagnosis of a terminal cancerous tumour.

Some of the plot developments are too pseudy and downright sillly for words (like agreeing to father a child with a motorway-café waitress whose husband is sterile), and it verges on being an American-indie-style melodrama: plinkety-plonkety pedalled-piano chords, a bit of French baroque sacred music to contrast with a squalid gay dungeon, that sort of thing. But when it works, it works very well indeed and it is, on the whole, a moving and interesting film.

Fantastic

I couldn't recommend this film enough. It's moving, erotic, at times funny and crucially it never comes close to being at all cliched as it shows how an arrogant gay man comes to terms with his terminal illness on his own. This character is conspired against by the film's own direction, for however much he may try to be an all-round unattractive character, Francois Ozon has ensured that you can't help but be attracted to him. One of Ozon's best, its french cinema at its finest as far as i'm concerned. It had me crying at many points, but don't let that put you off - the film is cathartic, not upsetting.