आलोचक समीक्षाएं

With a terrific lead from screen and stage veteran Hélène Vincent, this is Ozon in his fine-wine register, but with acerbic notes.

In addition to Ozon’s impressive work as writer and director, much of the credit for “When Fall is Coming” belongs to the ensemble cast, each of whom brings a unique element to the mix that makes the story so engrossing.

Hardcore Ozon fans will have fun arguing about where exactly this falls in the ranking of his substantial body of work, but it’s surely somewhere in the top 10 or even the top five, a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.

Nobody is exactly who they appear to be in “When Fall is Coming,” but Ozon’s nimble, perceptive little film takes that as a given: When winter and mortality are beckoning, the past only counts for so much.

This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.

No one’s proposing the story should be as radical as “8 Women” or as dark as “Swimming Pool”, but it’s almost too restrained at times, to the point where you end up wishing Ozon would push just that little bit more. Still, it’s hard to complain when the end result is this accomplished.

A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations.

The film is a bit too muddled to bring its main character fully into focus, despite Hélène Vincent’s best efforts to do so.

It’s an interesting, strange film, with a key moment withheld from the audience – and yet its omission, and the resulting ambiguity and mystery, is something we are almost supposed to forget about.

When Autumn Falls strays into some interesting, ethically thorny terrain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleasing solution rather than to have things become too dark or alienating.