Written by: Mia Hansen-Løve
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, André Marcon, Roman Kolinka, Édith Scob, Sarah Le Picard
Rating: [4/5]
The way life can change on a dime can leave anyone flatfooted. One can settle into their routine and everyday life, particularly when reaching middle age and suddenly all can change. Things to Come highlights this experience for a woman who had her husband walk away from her leading to a new perspective on life as she enters a chapter she never thought she would have to encounter in her life.
Spending her days as a philosophy teacher trying to teach her students the importance of critical thinking, Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) has her life flipped completely around. Suddenly everything changes when two areas that took a majority of her time end abruptly when her husband decides to leave her and her mother, who demanded much of her time passes away.
Things to Come does such a splendid job in how sets up this story and the emotional tightrope it sets up with plenty of conflicting feelings. Encountering the two hardships put before her of her husband leaving her on top of her mother passing away would put the average person in a major state of grief. The loss and severance of two critical relationships in their lives, but the way it all transpires for Nathalie allows for an intriguing perception of how she manages to handle it all. Not through what we typically see with a character going through these circumstances but rather a singular viewpoint Nathalie expresses allowing for such a rich experience.
The way Nathalie finds out the new reality from her husband that he plans to leave her for another woman happens so matter-of-fact and devoid of the emotion would expect. Similar to what the average person would emote when ordering something to eat and takes Nathalie aback. It gives her the opportunity to view her life through a different prism and also to find a level of enjoyment she did not think could exist once she reached this stage of her life. This shaking of the foundation completely changes everything, which makes complete sense. For Nathalie, she has lived with this man for decades and lived a particular way for so long. She could map out how each day would go for her from beginning to end. Something natural when a level of comfort begins to form for an individual. Having this shock to the system adds something new and this newfound freedom allows her to further ponder what she wants life to be moving forward.
Through Mia Hansen-Løve’s writing and direction, we see this story play out in such an elegant manner that does not sink into the melodrama this story could fall into but rather what someone like Nathalie would naturally react to in this circumstance. She certainly has the sadness that comes with losing one’s husband and the natural jealousy in trying to figure out the woman who bears some responsibility in this major shift in her life. However, she leans back into the philosophical beliefs she teaches her students and now gets the opportunity to apply this to her own life. It moves beyond the theory and onto the application. Something refreshing and scary all at once and Mia Hansen-Løve, as usual, has complete control over her stories and the emotions she wants to get from these characters with the narratives she creates. This feature demonstrates the first time she centers her story on a middle-aged woman, allowing a different perspective of life to explore and unsurprisingly she manages everything this fertile ground has to offer.
However, with that said, this feature would not work as well without the exceptional performance by Isabelle Huppert. At times she feels like a magician on screen in how she effortlessly fits into any role and knocks them out of the park. She demonstrates her mastery of this profession yet again in this feature where she needs to carry the brunt of everything in front of the screen and does so exceptionally well. She takes the wonderful dialogue Mia Hansen-Løve provides and brings it to life to have us feel the momentous stage she has now stepped into in her life and helps elevate the film as a whole.
Frolicking through nature having deep conversations about life and philosophy certainly does not sound like the worst circumstance to find oneself in and, it only serves as a portion of what Things to Come manages to capture through its narrative. It serves as a wondrous collaboration between two of the very best France has to offer both in front and behind the camera giving us this textually rich story that provides plenty to think about. It serves as the destruction and reclamation of a past life that allows for something new and surprisingly refreshing when going through something so dramatic on the surface. Definitely a unique story and undoubtedly one to appreciate because of the perspective it brings.
Films with Josh 
