At the cinema: off-season… why should we see this film by Guillaume Canet?

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Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice lives in a small seaside town in western France. He is fifty years old, a famous actor. He is over forty, a piano teacher. They fell in love about fifteen years ago. Then he broke up.

Since then, time has passed, everyone has gone their own way, and the wounds have slowly closed. When Mathieu comes to the whirlpool of the thalassotherapy center to dissolve his sadness, he accidentally finds Alice.

3 Reasons to Watch ‘The Off-Season’

The hors-saison presented in competition at the last Venice Film Festival (where the Golden Lion was awarded to poor creatures) left empty-handed. And this despite the obvious features. Among them.

1 – Moving Guillaume Canet

say “Like You’ve Never Seen Before” will be reductive and misleading. But we must admit that it has been several years since Guillaume Canet was so fair and moving in the cinema. Because in the name of the earth exactly in 2019, nor eternity.

In a more melancholic register (a word that will come up a lot here), he plays an actor preparing for the theater for the first time in his career, breaking down and leaving everything behind. Thalassotherapy. And since it is often difficult to analyze a film without considering the image of its main performer, the fact that Guillaume Canet plays this role makes it even more symbolic.

For his first on-screen appearance, his character Mathieu looks worn and haggard (when he doesn’t bother to take a selfie in the middle of a massage session), as the actor and director can see. it comes out About Asterix and Obelix Tsunami.

And perhaps that’s why it’s so fair, even if we can’t deny the contributions of her co-star Alba Rohrwacher or director Stefan Brize to her wonderful performance.

2 – gentle Stephen Breese

No, Stephane Briese isn’t just a social drama specialist with Vincent Lyndon. He does it very well, of course, and we encourage you to (re)watch the latest Another World to convince yourself of that. But with Hors-saison he returns to his first love (in every sense of the word).

In particular, human relationships (without necessarily social class at the center of the debate), the possibilities available to us, regret and how feelings can disrupt everyone’s existence, in this co-scenario. The director was in another world. In this way, he reunites with the tenderness of Mademoiselle Chambon, or the resistance of the Parisian province of Le Bleu des ville, his first feature film.

And I’m not here to love, could be the title of this new movie. Which combines situational comedy (humor close to the absurd, sometimes reminiscent of Bruno Podalides), drama and romance with a lot of unsaid and some duration, but with a lot of tenderness and takes us beyond time. Until his final, heartbreaking scenes.

3 – Melancholic Vincent Delerme

Almost a pleonasm for those familiar with the work of the French singer-songwriter who recently featured in Cléo, Melvil et moi. or Susan Lyndon’s Sixteen Springs. And which plays an important role in the off-season atmosphere here.

Thanks to the song “Neither with you nor without you”, the clip of which became known before the release. And, above all, that catchy little refrain that accompanies the whole story. Which may symbolize the state of mental confinement that Mathieu is in at the beginning, as well as the development of his and Alice’s emotions after their reunion.

And therein lies one of the film’s tour de force: the music doesn’t change the note when it reappears, but our perception of it does. In this way, it becomes fun at first, then sadder and more melancholy as the story progresses, perfectly matching the emotions of Stephane Brize and his cast, as well as enhancing them.

In the genre, we call it velvet. or sewn. It has a real impact on your mood the moment you leave the cinema.