Time To Leave
Director: Francois Ozon
Actors: Melvil Poupaud, Christian Sengelwald, Jeanne Moreau
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
A pretentious, Paris-based fashion photographer Romain (Poupaud) learns that he has only three months to live due to a malignant cancer tumour. Opting to go without treatment because the chances of survival are minimum (and because the chemo will ruin his hair), Romain begins to sees the world in a different light and doesn't see a reason to be anything but honest anymore. During a family dinner he cruelly insults his sister Sophie (Hippeau) and gets a lift home with his father only to get him to stop off to buy a gram of coke. Upon arrival to his luscious apartment, Romain has sex with his live-in boyfriend (Sengelwald) one last time before booting him out and then goes to visits his grandmother (Moreau) whom he hasn't seen in years. On his way back, he is propositioned by a childless woman who offers Romain money if he can impregnate her. The strange situation makes Romain consider his legacy to a world he is not long for.
What director Francois Ozon was clever in doing was to make us take a good look at the world and ourselves - both through Romain's eyes and our own simultaneously - and the end result fills us both full of hope and despair; but is it Romain's hope and our disappear or vice versa as both are left deliberately ambiguous. Ozon consciously rests his almost stationary camera on Poupaud throughout as we share everything with him for the last time - a meal, his stroll through the apartment etc. What makes Time To Leave stand out from the other 'last days' films like Death In Venice et al, is that Ozon, and Poupaud, never lapse into melodrama (although is not shy in its poignant moments) while making Romain full of regret for what could have been, yet satisfied with what he has achieved.
