Berlinale: L’Avenir

Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) is a philosophy teacher, teaching in a France going through changes. It is still the Sarkozy era and students are reliving the spirit of the 60s by striking outside her school. She is unperturbed by these left-wingers, saying that is up to her to teach philosophy without resorting to dogmatism. Like her approach to philosophy, L’Avenir seems to have the same approach to presenting humanity. It shows us a brilliantly resilient woman who has to go through a difficult time in her life – an unfaithful husband, an overbearing mother, a publishing house that doesn’t appreciate her style any more – but faces it with wit, joy and an immense empathy for the strength of the human spirit.

It works like a warmer version of Three Colours: Blue, a movie also about a woman who upon finding her circumstances drastically shift has to slowly learn to accept the cards life gives her. Avoiding easy consolations and resolutions – whether of a professional or romantic kind – it tells a timeless story about the nature of desire and hope, and the ultimate uncertainty of what the future brings.

Image: Berlinale

This is reflected in the construction of the script. The screenplay is particularly adept at introducing seemingly invisible plot points – long philosophical conversations that only later bridge into actual situations. It shows how some things in life don’t just happen suddenly, but are in a gradual process of readjustment.

Huppert here brings the kind of performance that wins Cesar awards, giving full weight and scope to a character burdened down by the world’s cruelty, but one who refuses to let it get her down. She is an actress that not only knows how to speak with clarity and precision, but one who can also articulate it with mere body language alone. She is undeniably a member of the bourgeois – she gives philosophy books to her newly-born grandchild, and watches Kiarostami films alone in the cinema – yet whilst the film pokes fun at the middle-class, it is done with a loving spirit. It also finds the time to contrast her life with the idealistic young, such as the somewhat pretentious anarchists living in a commune in the countryside. By presenting different philosophical positions such as this, and by withholding judgement, Love shows the way everyone needs their own personal morality in order to justify their particular lifestyle.

She observes the rhythms of life with the immense skill of a true auteur, always observant of the gentle passing of time and the ways our perspectives subtly change as we grow older. Her elliptical style works much to her advantage here, foregoing big ‘dramatic’ moments to instead show a life in a gradual state of change, stressed by fluid and intuitive camera shots. To have such wisdom and insight of human nature at the young age of thirty-five is a gift. In the press conference she mentioned that she is not the heir of Rohmer, but she’s probably the best we’ve got – expertly showing smart and empathetic people walking and talking in Parisian parks and streets. There must be something in the Parisian air that makes people so interesting when they talk. Here’s hoping she makes more wonderfully empathetic films for many many years to come.

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Roman Kolinka Edith Scob

Running Time: 100 minutes