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Boston Globe
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘When Fall is Coming' mixes motherly love with poisonous mushrooms
Michelle lives in the French countryside, in a house too large for an older woman to keep by herself. We see her cleaning up, wandering in the woods and tending to her garden, all depicted in scenes that take their time to unfold. Meanwhile, in Paris, her daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) lives with her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), in a flat Michelle gave them. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Hélène Vincent and Garlan Erlos in WHEN FALL IS COMING. (Music Box Films) Music Box Films Advertisement Valérie's relationship with her mother is tense; her anger is rooted mostly in the lax way Michelle raised her. An early sequence highlights her seemingly uneventful visit to Michelle's house. Valérie is going through a nasty divorce, which Lucas blames on himself. Michelle comforts him as his mother argues with his father on her cell phone outside. Sounds like a standard family drama, n'est-ce pas? We expect to see battles between mother and daughter, a reconciliation between Marie-Claude and Vincent once he's released, and the growing bond between a grandmother and grandson. And we get all that as the film unfolds over a leisurely 104 minutes. Advertisement But lest we forget, this is a film by François Ozon. Though the director dabbles in other genres (his work includes last year's raucous screwball comedy, 'The Crime Is Mine,' and 2019's harrowing Catholic church child molestation drama, 'By the Grace of God'), he's most famous for writing twisty plots in the thriller genre. Ludivine Sagnier in WHEN FALL IS COMING. (Music Box Films) Music Box Films Here, he puts viewers familiar with his work on guard by casting Sagnier, the star of perhaps his most well-known film, 2003's 'Swimming Pool.' In that erotic thriller, Sagnier was the young and seductive femme fatale, of sorts, acting opposite Charlotte Rampling's older, British mystery writer. In this film, she has an almost supernatural role as a manifestation of guilt. Ozon (who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Philippe Piazzo) toys with the audience in very subtle ways. This film is a master class in keeping an understated tone that's more unsettling than sinister. The cast, full of French acting veterans, is made up of willing and able accomplices. We're not sure what they're up to, but even the most mundane events raise questions. For example, Valérie's aforementioned 'seemingly uneventful' visit to her mother's house culminates with Michelle's mushroom dish accidentally poisoning Valérie and nearly killing her. Or was it intentional? Michelle didn't eat any of the mushrooms, and she knew Lucas disliked them intensely. Could this have been a failed murder attempt? Hélène Vincent in WHEN FALL IS COMING. (Music Box Films) Music Box Films Valérie does think her mother was trying to kill her, though this may just be anger clouding her judgment. As a result, she refuses to let Lucas see his grandmother. Valérie's rage stems from the shame she feels knowing that, when she was a kid, her mother and Marie-Claire were high-priced sex workers in Paris. Advertisement Meanwhile, a fresh out of prison Vincent attempts to commit a chivalrous act by speaking to Valérie on Michelle's behalf. The two knew each other in childhood, so this visit doesn't seem random or unusual. Their scene leads to yet another incident where we're unsure if what happened was accidental or not. In addition to meditating on how children believe their mothers ruined their childhood with bad parenting, 'When Fall Is Coming' intrigues us by giving just enough information to keep us guessing. When a pregnant police investigator (Sophie Guillemin) gets involved after the mushroom incident, her lines of questioning lead to answers that we know are untrue. Who's protecting whom, and why? Ozon is wise enough to give us only some of the answers. By the end of 'When Fall is Coming,' we recognize the film for what it is: a character study elevated by Vincent's superb performance. She's in almost every scene, only stopping to rest in her final moment onscreen. Ozon films this scene in an overhead shot that, like the rest of this movie, feels peaceful yet unsettling. ★★★1/2 WHEN FALL IS COMING Directed by François Ozon. Written by Ozon in collaboration with Philippe Piazzo. Starring Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Pierre Lottin, Ludivine Sagnier, Garlan Erlos, Sophie Guillemin. At Coolidge Corner. 104 min. In French with English subtitles. Unrated (language). Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
Vogue Singapore
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue Singapore
Fred high jewellery revisits the halcyon childhood of Fred Samuel
'Everything goes back to the fondateur , the founding act and the personality and vision of my grandfather.' Valérie Samuel, the third generation of Samuels to head the French jewellery house Fred, explains to me in a tea room at Josun Palace in Seoul. A night before, in the middle of March, the brand had staged a gala for Monsieur Fred Ideal Light, its latest collection of high jewellery. Courtesy of Fred The collection is the second part of a triptych dedicated to the maison's eponymous Fred Samuel, the Argentine-born, Paris-based jeweller who founded the brand in 1936. 'I started with Inner Light, which was really paying tribute to his personality. And now, I am trying to explain why light—us being the Sunshine Jeweller—is so important at Fred.' Valérie traced the source of the maison's solar obsession to its founder's childhood. A line from his memoirs, in particular, mentions almost exactly the 'ideal light' of Argentina. Blazing Audacity toi et moi ring in white gold, set with a vivid-orange spessartite garnet and a cushion-cut red spinel, with diamonds, orange spessartite garnets and pink rubellites. Courtesy of Fred Bright Vitality necklace in white gold, set with a pair of Colombian Muzo emeralds and with baguette- and brilliant-cut diamonds. Courtesy of Fred Endless Horizon rings in white gold. Left: Set with a royal blue sapphire, and with diamonds, sapphires, lapis lazuli and rock crystal. Right: Set with a Fred Hero cut diamond, and with diamonds and sapphires. Courtesy of Fred Exalting Joy ring in white gold, set with a cushion-cut 9.34-carat tourmaline, and with diamonds, and Opalazur doublets of white opal and turquoise. Courtesy of Fred The result is a collection in four thematic chapters that draws varied Argentinian inspiration. From the heat and passion of the tango, born in La Boca, comes the Blazing Audacity of red jewels set with spinels, rubellites and spessartite garnets. In Exalting Joy, Montserrat's fabulous parades and embroideries inspired a white, blue and green palette of diamonds, opals, aquamarines and tourmalines. Bright Vitality nods to the greens of the Palermo gardens with verdant Colombian emeralds. And lastly, the beaches of Mar del Plata offered nautical creativity with sailing cable designs in carved lapis lazuli and rock crystal. It tells a particular story: that of heritage, and of centring creativity at the highest levels of craftsmanship on a brand that takes its founder's first name. 'I realised that some things were put to the side and suddenly it's coming back,' Valérie offers of the house's close-to-nine-decade-long heritage. 'It's what happened to me when I came back seven years ago to the maison. Heritage is a source of inspiration, a starting point. But obviously, it's never a one-to-one application.' Embroidered Spanish bracelets inspired the woven design of the Exalting Joy necklace. Courtesy of Fred Rather than recreate history, she defines a successful design as one that surprises you to know where an idea came from and to see it translated. 'I'm always taking pictures,' she says of her creative process. 'I have the impression, if I've tried to analyse the creation process, that it's an amalgamation of a lot of pieces of inspiration' from architecture, art and fashion, for example. The flipside can also be true. 'On the Exalting Joy, to have that thread bracelet as an inspiration was quite direct.' This thread bracelet she refers to is one of the more innovative designs of the Monsieur Fred Ideal Light collection. It's inspired by the woven embroideries on the costumes of festival dancers. As jewellery, it's rendered in a tie necklace that can be broken up and transformed into a bracelet, and two shorter necklaces. To create the particular colours, the maison developed the Opalazur, a doublet of stacked opal and turquoise that gives it a beguiling specificity to its blue-green shades. Courtesy of Fred 'It was not that I wanted to innovate,' Valérie clarifies. 'It's innovation for bringing to life an idea.' It's what makes high jewellery exciting: that craftsmanship is guided by imagination, not industrial means putting parameters on design. This willingness to go further, she admits, is in the roots of the house. Part of what makes Fred an interesting maison to watch at the moment is its balancing act of being almost nine decades old and three generations in, while also championing a light-hearted, youthful spirit. 'It was not the philosophy and vision of my grandfather to be a statutory brand,' Valérie says. 'He created Fred with his own vision, his own soul and his own way of doing business. I think we keep that philosophy, even if now, as you say, we start to be respectable because we are close to 90 years old. It doesn't make us statutory in terms of the distance and connection with our client.' Fred global brand ambassador Jin. Courtesy of Fred Actress Lee Sung-kyung. Courtesy of Fred Actor and model Cha Seung-won. Courtesy of Fred Actress Kim Hye-soo. Courtesy of Fred What makes these words particularly impactful is the simple fact that Valérie grew up with Fred Samuel. She was two years old when she attended her first event by the maison, and she remembers being around 12 when she realised that Monsieur Fred was not merely her grandfather, but someone rather renowned. 'He was Monsieur Fred to his clients, his friends, to the concierge at the hotel. That's the most important memory, that he was a unique man.' This emphasis on Fred, the man, also played out at a catwalk show of the collection during the gala dinner. For the closing look: a male model, dressed in a white linen suit and boating shoes, his hair slicked back in the elegant manner of a turn-of-the-century dandy. For a brand touting a heritage and identity—sure, it's nothing new. But for Valérie, it is almost certainly a personal and closely held matter. 'He was Monsieur Fred to his clients, his friends, to the concierge at the hotel. That's the most important memory, that he was a unique man' She lets on that in the last few years, some of the most rewarding memories at the maison have in fact been pulling together an archive. It culminated when the brand staged its first heritage exhibition and continues today with the Monsieur Fred series of high jewellery collections. 'It was the first time we were able to tell the full story of the maison,' she says. 'I knew the stories because I was working with my family 20 years ago, but when I was telling these stories I didn't have the materials to show.' Not anymore. After sorting through over 1,000 boxes—of heritage and design, yes, but also financial and legal documents—she found some keepsakes of her youth. Forty years of letters and exchanges with the Nepalese royal family, who were clients of the maison, including an order that Valérie delivered personally in 1995. 'When we relaunched Pretty Woman in 2021, I don't know why but the stars were aligned. I rediscovered my father's authentication letter given to the client who bought the necklace from the movie,' she recounts of the ruby and diamond design that gave the maison its biggest Hollywood moment. Sailing is one of the design pillars at Fred. In the Endless Horizon suite of jewels, the taut lines of sailing ropes and cables are interpreted with carved lapis lazuli and rock crystal. Courtesy of Fred 'The DNA is there, and in 100 years I want the DNA to still be true to the vision of Monsieur Fred. This is very important,' she muses on the part she plays as the house's contemporary artistic director. 'But, of course, you can renew yourself. A brand is like a diamond with many facets—one day you can show one facet, and the other you show another.' A metaphor given like a true jeweller. One interesting facet of the Samuel family, moreover, is a love of sailing—a passion that has inspired the brand's signature Force 10 collection. I teasingly ask Valérie if she is a sailor herself. 'I am a very bad sailor, so I cannot say that,' she laughs. 'But my brother is a big sailor. He has crossed the Atlantic several times and done some races. So he got that talent, education and passion from my father. Myself, I'm actually very scared on the boat.' When I suggest that perhaps talents were split and she simply inherited the jeweller's side of the family, she laughs and nods amiably. 'I engraved my brother's [sailing] record on his Force 10 bracelet. When he came back, I think it was from two months on the boat, I engraved the days, hours and minutes— congratulations! I couldn't do that!' The May 'Sonder' issue of Vogue Singapore is now available to pre-order online and available on newsstands from 14 May.
Wall Street Journal
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘When Fall Is Coming' Review: Autumnal Ambiguities
This year, spring has sprung at American indie cinemas with a pair of French films that are distinctly out of season, colored by the yellow leaves of autumn: Two weeks ago was Alain Guiraudie's 'Misericordia,' and this weekend brings 'When Fall Is Coming,' directed by the prolific François Ozon. Both involve murder, mushrooms, and a young man who just might be taking advantage of an older woman. But where Mr. Guiraudie is an impish auteur, using mystery and melodrama for his own playfully perverse ends, Mr. Ozon takes a slightly more straightforward approach, and his movie is the less persuasive and compelling of the two. That it is still worthwhile owes largely to the sympathetic, sinuous performance of Hélène Vincent, in the lead role of a grand-mère who may not be as simply sweet as she first appears. Ms. Vincent's Michelle lives alone in a lovely old house in Burgundy, where she leads a quiet life of gardening, going for walks and reading by the fire, her typical solitude broken only by meetings with her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko). But as the film begins, Michelle is expecting visitors, soon to arrive from Paris: her daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), and grandson, Lucas (Garlan Erlos). In eager anticipation, Michelle prepares a splendid-looking lunch—mushrooms, freshly foraged and sautéed, and a quiche of epic diameter—and then sits to await the sound of their car pulling up outside. As written by Mr. Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, Valérie turns out to be a bit of a caricature, the harried adult child who radiates stress and urban frenzy even in the tranquil countryside. She enters the movie complaining about traffic and shortly thereafter lands on the sofa to stare squarely at her phone, scarcely interested in her mother and rudely rebuffing attempts at conversation. When she ends up in the hospital due to the mushrooms served at lunch, it almost seems like a bit of karmic justice. But could it have been justice of a more deliberate kind? Devised by, say, her own mother? At lunch, Michelle claimed that she wasn't hungry, and she knew that Lucas didn't like mushrooms, which left only Valérie to eat them. The doctors and the police whom Michelle talks to see the incident as an honest mistake, familiar to anyone who has taken a chance on wild fungi. (Which is, it seems, most French people.) But Mr. Ozon delights in tweaking the drama with tacit uncertainties. Didn't we see Michelle consulting a mushroom identification chart as she prepared lunch? Could she have made such a dangerous error? Valérie neither knows nor cares—all she wants is to return to Paris, which she does as soon as she's out of the hospital, taking Lucas along with her, to the devastation of his grandmother. The film allows a moment of bare emotion for mother and daughter alike following her departure, as we see Michelle in her loneliness at home and Valérie crying as she drives away. There is, we sense, a past of great pain between these two. When the film eventually reveals more about that past, the answers are surprising. But they don't carry much depth, instead tending toward a silly, scandalizing sensibility that Mr. Ozon's generally realist approach can't convey with much credibility. Still, the film has its strengths: Ms. Vincent and Ms. Balasko make a great, world-weary team as rueful mothers, with Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), having just been released from prison. 'I hate to say it,' Marie-Claude says, 'but with our kids, we failed miserably.' Yet Vincent, at least outwardly swearing off the troublemaking of his youth, is friendly to Michelle, who hires him to do odd jobs around her property. Mr. Lottin leverages the hint of menace beneath his slick handsomeness to create a figure whose seductive ambiguity tilts toward the sinister, which the film puts to engaging use in its continuing twists. And although some work better than others, Ms. Vincent is steadfast in her commitment to a character whose morality and true affections are themselves the stuff of mystery.
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘When Fall is Coming' Review: Cooking Up a Mystery
For 'When Fall Is Coming,' the French filmmaker François Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It's there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we're reminded, and as Ozon's movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer. Ozon's efficiency and polished style are among his appeals — his films include 'Under the Sand' and 'Swimming Pool' — and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle's daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother. Michelle's life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Valérie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know. Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm's fairy-tale 'Snow-White and Rose-Red,' about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don't have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Valérie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Valérie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Valérie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle's house. 'I'll owe less in taxes when you die,' she says before taking a swig of wine. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
When Autumn Falls review – François Ozon's diverting mystery of tricky family dynamics
That amazingly prolific film-maker François Ozon returns with an intriguing, if tonally uncertain, mystery drama about a suspected murder. In it, the implied Chabrol-esque horror is made to coexist with an odd mood of gentleness and even sentimentality as we witness the loneliness of an ageing woman with secrets and regrets in the autumn of her life. This is Michelle, played by 81-year-old actor-director Hélène Vincent; at one point, Ozon allows us to notice she is reading a book by Ruth Rendell, whose thrillers were famously adapted by Claude Chabrol (La Cérémonie, The Bridesmaid) and indeed by Ozon himself (The New Girlfriend). This film is not a Rendell adaptation, but I wonder if Ozon and his co-screenwriter Philippe Piazzo were inspired by the Rendell short story Means of Evil, which also involved mushroom poisoning and a fall from a balcony. Michelle lives in the countryside, near her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), whose grownup son Vincent (Pierre Lottin) is nearing the end of a prison term. Michelle has a tense, unhappy relationship with her recently divorced and permanently angry daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) but adores her grandson Lucas. They come to stay and Michelle inadvertently serves them poisonous mushrooms that she has picked in the nearby forest, and Valérie has to be taken to hospital. (The plot rather unconvincingly explains why it's only Valérie who eats the mushrooms: Lucas says he doesn't like them and Michelle says her appetite is ruined by Valérie's bad temper.) Once discharged from hospital, Valérie furiously leaves, taking Lucas with her, all but accusing of Michelle of trying to kill her and swearing to stop her ever seeing Lucas again. And when moody Vincent gets out of jail, he feels an intense loyalty to Michelle, who tries to help him financially – and his outrage on her behalf at Valérie denying access to Lucas leads indirectly to disaster, in the course of which Michelle's own secrets are disclosed. 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. There are imaginary 'ghost' apparitions that do not bring a stab of fear and guilt as they may in a more obvious crime thriller, but a kind of bland unease. Michelle is clearly capable of ruthlessness, lying and obstructing the course of justice, and perhaps she is guilty of a kind of unintended, delayed murder. But the film invites us to ignore this dark side to her and the dysfunction she has (at least arguably) implanted in Lucas in favour of a bittersweet sadness. For all this, the puzzle is diverting. When Autumn Falls is in UK and Irish cinemas from 21 March.
