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Writer-director Laurent Cantet's Time Out (L'Emploi Du Temps) is a harrowing, but relentlessly ordinary chronicle of a middle-aged French businessman caught up in a spiral of responsibility, pressure, lies and deception.
I emphasize "man" because no woman would be this selfish, this courageously stupid. Cantet incisively explores the male as reluctant provider, as the victim of self-image.
He is the loving father of three children and loving husband to an adoring and adorable wife. He is a man who masks his inner fears and really does provide for his family. Until he loses his job.
He is fired. Afraid to tell his wife -- and even more so his judgmental father -- the man fabricates a parallel existence as a mighty road warrior hurrying to business meetings as a consultant.
Pushed for details, he switches gears and invents a flashy new job for himself at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. That allows him the heady freedom of disappearing for days. He usually sleeps in his car, his only refuge, the only place where he can shake off the torment.
But now, pushed for cash to maintain the lie and still put the proverbial bread on the table, he invents a shady investment scheme and defrauds old friends for wads of cash.
Obviously, sooner or later and probably sooner, this elaborate deception will crash around him. How that happens, who is involved and the manner in which people greet the news is the core of this penetrating psychological study.
The performances of the central actors in this drama are impressive. French stage star Aurelien Recoing proves to have an astonishing command of the screen, too. He knows how to use silence, small gestures and his haunted eyes to speak volumes about a man who is hurtling into an abyss he fears and welcomes. He also makes the hero both odious and compelling. The contradictions are fascinating.
Also excellent is Karin Viard as the wife who trusts too much, holding back the conflicted notions that well up inside. A real revelation is Serge Livrozet, a former real-life gangster and convict who is now an author and anarchist.
As an actor, Livrozet carries weight, and not just the baggage of his own bizarre story. Here he plays a charming crook who instinctively understands that the hero is concocting an elaborate fantasy. Their interaction is crucial.
At 129 minutes, though, Time Out is too long for its subject matter. The car driving metaphor is extended far longer than we need to understand the obsession. And a key scene just before the sadly melancholic ending doesn't make sense.
Yet Time Out, playing here in French with English subtitles, still provides a provocative look inside human nature.
(This film is rated PG)