Only Disconnect...

by
Howard
Schumann

Time Out, the new film by Laurent Cantet (Human Resources) is a psychological study of a man who is in "denial" after he loses his job as a financial consultant, and resorts to lies and deception to keep up the pretense of employment for the sake of his family. Yet it is also a searing portrait of the failure of the workplace to provide a nurturing environment for people - not a theme much explored on the Hollywood assembly line these days.

Popular French stage actor Aurélien Recoing plays Vincent, who is so detached from reality that he goes through the motions of pretending to work for the United Nations on a development mission. His "job" is conveniently based across the border in Switzerland, away from his wife and three children. There he spends his hours driving around in his car, going in and out of hotels and conference rooms, exerting as much energy in his pretense as he would if he were actually working. The point, made with drily trenchant humor, is that his "pretend" job is different only in degree from his former "real" one.

Time Out is a subtle, involving, and truly perceptive comment on the shallow, conformist world of middle management. It depicts how an individual's identity can be so wrapped up in what he does that he can scarcely remember who he is or what is most meaningful in his life. Cantet has a fine visual sense for the world of business with its offices, hotels, and associates, and the style matches the eerie detachment of the protagonist, whose day-to-day activity consists only in constructing a false life.

Vincent has to resort to obtaining money under false pretenses from his friends and his father, and to assisting a petty criminal in his smuggling attempts. For all his lies, Vincent confesses how suffocating his job has been. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do," he cries to his wife (Karin Viard), under the pretense of discussing his non-existent new position. As he stands on the outside looking in, he slowly loses touch with everything that has given his life meaning. His family, whom he truly loves, cannot provide the emotional support he needs. The lack of a dimension of intimacy, the failure to communicate, and the skimming along on the surface of life, is not new to this family. These are the same people who live next door to you, always happy and smiling, who seem to have it together until a crisis comes. Then they have no inner strength to deal with it.

Time Out is the best film I've encountered this year. I highly recommend seeing it - with an open mind, if possible.

Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher is not an easy film to watch, nor to dismiss. When I left the theater I was not so much moved as emotionally shattered. The images are graphic and, at times, sickening - yet I found it to be a film that touches the soul and can be overwhelmingly beautiful in its dark poetry.

The story concerns Erika (Isabelle Huppert), a middle-aged piano teacher who becomes involved in a perverse, self-hating, and destructive relationship with a student (Benoît Magimel). Based on a 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek in which she drew on her relationship with a domineering mother, and on her own repressed sexuality, the film is a searing study of its title character's sexual pathology. The brilliant and powerful performances of the two lead actors received best acting awards at Cannes last year.

The central sadomasochistic drama is played out against the background of Erika's enmeshment with her controlling mother (the entirely convincing Annie Girardot). Huppert, who is in practically every scene of the film, mastefully portrays her character's internalizing of this monstrous parent, and the fearful consequences to her psyche.

Though the film ostensibly takes place in Vienna, there is no real sense of location, only interiors that could be anywhere in the world. As Jelinik says, "This is Never-Never land where nothing ends and nothing begins." Adding to the intensity, the TV is always on in the apartment as an unwanted and intrusive presence. At the same time, The Piano Teacher is filled with beautiful music, and it is something of a relief to be able to listen to wonderful performances of Schubert and Schumann. Yet Haneke shows us people who are surrounded by great music, but are numb to the emotional experience. The characters talk about the great composers with cold and intellectual certainty, entirely without passion.

Erika, in addition to being a cruel and exacting teacher, is a sex-obsessed voyeur. Her rapid descent begins when the much younger Walter (Magimel) makes a move on her in the conservatory bathroom. Haneke brings you so close to the action that all you can do is squirm. Although the camera never goes below the waist, the game of sexual domination and submission is clearly visible in the facial expressions of the characters. Ultimately there is no release of tension for a character who seems torn between madness and reason, acts on strange impulses, seems completely estranged from humanity, but remains so deeply human that we can recognize a part of ourselves in her.

The temptation is to say that these people are not me. They are so sick. Yes, that may be true - but isn't there is a part of Erika that is becoming more and more recognizable every day? We seem increasingly surrounded by people who find it difficult to express emotion, who seek satisfaction but are unable to provide it, who are desensitized to violence and any kind of human empathy - and who commit murder "to see what it feels like." Haneke's film is challenging the audience's request for sex and violence in movies. He has made a practice of presenting films (such as 1997's Funny Games) that shock and repel audiences, and has apparently decided that filmmakers and audiences alike are responsible for the cycle of creating and consuming violence.

In a statement in 1996, Haneke said, "My films are polemical statements against the American 'taking -by-surprise-before-one-can-think' cinema and its disempowerment of the spectator. It is an appeal for a cinema of insistent questioning in place of 'false-because-too-quick-answers,' for clarifying distance in place of violating nearness. I want the spectator to think". He has definitely made us think, and it is not a comfortable experience.

©2002 Howard Schumann
CineScene