Things to Come | Isabelle Huppert excels as a philosophy professor undergoing midlife agonies

By Jason Best
( What's on TV )
published

Things to Come Isabelle Huppert Edith Scob
(Image credit: © Artificial Eye)

Things to Come Isabelle Huppert Edith Scob

French screen icon Isabelle Huppert delivers one of the finest performances of her career as a philosophy professor undergoing personal and professional crises in director Mia Hansen-Løve’s superb midlife drama Things to Come (L'avenir).

There’s nothing histrionic about her acting and nor is there anything remotely melodramatic about the plot. Yet as Huppert’s Nathalie faces the challenges thrown up by an unfaithful husband and a backsliding publisher, not to mention the demands of her attention-seeking elderly mother (Edith Scob, veteran star of Georges Franju's surreal horror classic Eyes Without a Face) and her ambivalent feelings for her handsome protégé (Roman Kolinka), we build up a picture of a complex, truly three-dimensional personality, portrayed by Huppert with a convincing mix of vulnerability and resilience, intellectual rigour and emotional openness.

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Certificate 12. Runtime 102 mins. Director Mia Hansen-Løve

Things to Come is available on Blu-ray & DVD from Curzon Artificial Eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhErAqJ8HGE

Jason Best
Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.