Olivier Assayas’s semi-autobiographical COVID chamber dramedy Suspended Time (Hors du temps) is a slight film, which shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a bad thing, although I can see how some viewers might chafe at the extent to which Assayas draws out his slim narrative conceit. The story takes place during the spring and summer of 2020, when much of the world went into lockdown. Some have suggested that the fundamental failure of Assayas’s film is that it doesn’t deal with the financial, cultural, psychological, and political fallout of that decision; I would argue that it is in this vein that the film’s slightness is to its benefit. To dismiss the film for not taking a stance on the moral or ethical implications of forced lockdowns is to miss the point. The COVID lockdown is just the pretext for exploring the relationship between two adult brothers who are thrust together into extended co-existence for the first time since they were kids. That is the film’s heart and soul, and it succeeds or fails in that terrain.

The brothers are Paul (Vincent Macaigne), an independent filmmaker (read: Assayas stand-in), and Etienne (Micha Lescot), a rock music critic and podcaster. Where Paul is high-strung and germophobic, literally setting out his phone to watch a video on proper handwashing technique while at the sink, Etienne is too laid-back to get caught up in pandemic hysteria. Both brothers are divorced (with Etienne in the middle of his), and both are spending lockdown with their current girlfriends, Morgane (Nine d’Urso) and Carole (Nora Hamzawi), respectively. They have retreated to the rural home of Paul and Etienne’s childhood, which is located in the Chevreuse Valley an hour south of Paris. The film opens, and is regularly punctuated by, picturesque, sun-dappled shots of the countryside accompanied by Paul’s nostalgic voiceover narration in which he addresses his childhood, their neighbors, and the rhythms of life in the country. That nostalgia regularly butts up against the current reality, as Paul and Etienne’s various differences flare up, sometimes into shouting matches, although never with any sense of lasting damage. Whenever voices are raised, they eventually die down and life goes on.

And that is primarily what the film has to offer: not any grand insights or dramatic climaxes, but rather the ebb and flow of life at a strange time when the world was literally on pause. Paul ends up romanticizing the suspended time in which he is living, although that is easy to do when your finances are secure and you have a charming country home with modern conveniences where you can while away the hours. There is an air of privilege that suffuses Suspended Time, and if Assays has a major blind spot, it is the lack of attention paid to just how good the Berger brothers have it. Etienne is able to continue podcasting about the Beatles from inside the house, and Paul continues prepping a new film while his filmmaker ex-wife, Flavia (Maud Wyler), an obvious stand-in for Assayas’s ex-partner, actress-turned-director Mia Hansen-Løve, laments the shut-down of her latest production. Anything they need they either pick up outside the local grocery or order from Amazon, and the only real hint of political engagement is when Etienne gives Paul a hard time about relying so heavily on the online retailer, quipping about “vengeance purchases” and how Amazon is a “war profiteer.” Meanwhile, Paul is still able to see his psychoanalyst (Dominique Reymond) via Zoom, which means that very little about his life has been genuinely upended.

And yet, one also has to appreciate Assayas’s willingness to sidestep the various political pitfalls into which the film could have disappeared, instead focusing on the offbeat rhythms of daily life and how small choices and actions define the major characters. Vincent Macaigne and Micha Lescot have good on-screen chemistry as the very different brothers, and their various conflicts feel as easy and natural as the scenes in which they get along well. There aren’t great depths of insight to be mined here, but the film is affable and playful enough to entertain while also nagging us just enough to think back on our own experiences during the pandemic, when things may not have been so sun-dappled and easygoing.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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