When Fall Is Coming (2024) ‘Cinemania’ Movie Review: A Classically Cozy French Family Drama

In France, François Ozon has more or less taken on the mystique of a sort of European Hong Sang-soo—the announcement of a new film in his catalog might as well be the announcement of a new Tuesday. Where Ozon may differ from Hong, however, is in the particular palatability of his prolific output; while it may take a while for Hong to wear you down, Ozon’s is an approach that is more or less accessible for just about anybody right from the start.

Just as there’s a strange comfort in the regularity of his releases, there’s something inherently cozy in the sort of French family dramas—some might call them “thrillers,” were it not for their frequently casual dispositions—Ozon pumps out like Stephen King pumps out new horror stories. In crafting an oeuvre whose general essence is one of contained coziness, it only makes sense that a film titled  “When Fall Is Coming” (an atrociously awkward translation of the French title that should probably be closer to “When Fall Arrives”) would wholeheartedly embrace that relaxed demeanor.

Set in the French countryside (When during the year, exactly? One could only guess…), “When Fall Is Coming” takes as its focus the old Michelle (Héléne Vincent), a retiree living alone in a small Burgundy village. She does her best to keep busy—tending to her garden, picking mushrooms, attending mass—but aside from her best friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), Michelle longs to fill the hole of companionship that her estranged daughter (Ludivine Sagnier) and her grandson Lucas (Garlan Erlos) can fill.

Michelle gets her chance when the pair drive out from Paris to spend some quality time together at the grandmother’s cottage, but not even a whole day of passive-aggressive remarks from Valérie is over before a near-tragedy uproots the entire situation. During lunch, Michelle has accidentally prepared poisonous mushrooms, sending her daughter to the hospital and, consequently, planting seeds of distrust that have given Valérie every excuse she’s ever needed to keep herself and her son as far away as possible. Crushed at the chance of grandmotherly companionship ripped away just as soon as it was teased, Michelle’s only comforts come from Marie-Claude and her until-recently incarcerated son Vincent (Pierre Lottin), who comes around to help the lonely grandmother, taking pity on the personal circumstances with which he has no real business.

It doesn’t take long for Ozon to set the stage for a family dynamic just waiting to be shattered by years of repressed baggage, and “When Fall Is Coming” relishes in just how much information it can, organically or not, set up in the middle-ground to be shockingly revealed at a later time. In this sense, the film isn’t too far from the territory of “baby’s first Farhadi,” but in execution, it’s the quaintness of Ozon’s characterization that allows this unfolding structure to avoid any irritating pleas for mic-drop recognition.

Though the eventual reveals inherently find themselves taking center-stage, “When Fall Is Coming” allows its characters to keep those revelations grounded within the scope of what, in the grand scheme of things, would amount to little more than reconcilable family drama, were it not for the containment of Ozon’s atmosphere magnifying these issues into the greatest calamities of these characters’ lives. And, to be fair, for any family unit, this level of distrust and toxicity IS quite calamitous and made all the more upsetting by the performances that keep it all tethered.

The dynamic that forms between Michelle and Vincent never gets to any sort of sexually charged space (not explicitly, at least), but Ozon’s foregrounding of the value of second chances immediately places these two in a position that makes them predisposed towards being the leg for the other to stand on when the world begins to buckle beneath them. Vincent and Lottin have amicable chemistry together—not unlike Vincent and Balasko, but with the age and gender difference creating an alternate sort of implied kinship—and Lottin specifically makes use of the moral ambiguity embedded in his convict portrayal. The man’s blasé line delivery is all it takes to get plentiful dry laughs amidst the trepidation one might feel from his hulking, limping figure.

Based on its title (horribly translated as it may be), you’d think a film like “When Fall Is Coming” would wrap itself in a nauseating degree of autumnal coloration to truly sink you into the cozy scenery that anticipates the harshness of coming winter. François Ozon, preferring to keep every aspect of his film—save for the giddy contrivances of his reveals and some guilt-ridden spectral touches—as low-key as possible, instead allows the film to invite you into its sense of classically minimal drama by way of a few tasty breadcrumbs. So as long as those breadcrumbs come served sans fungi, the recipe is sure to whet your modest viewing appetite as the final leaves begin to fall.

Read More: Interview with François Ozon: “I was faithful to the book which never problematizes gayness.”

Also Read: 10 Best French Movies of 2024

When Fall Is Coming (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
The Cast of When Fall Is Coming (2024) Movie: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier
When Fall Is Coming (2024) Movie Runtime: 1h 42m, Genre: Comedy/Drama