AllMovie

Precise, deliberate, and resolutely political, Laurent Cantet's L'emploi du temps (released in the U.S. as Time Out) is a remarkably assured film for a second-time director. Betraying a preoccupation with work as a pet theme -- his debut feature, 1999's Human Resources, also revolved around the subject -- Cantet crafts a searing examination of the ways in which a societal emphasis on work has cramped individual freedom and distorted human interaction. The movie stars Aurelien Recoing as Vincent, a man recently laid off from his anonymous, middle-management position. Poker-faced throughout much of the movie, Vincent is an ultimately pathetic figure in a glumly realistic landscape. More a nuanced critique than a raging polemic, the movie assails the bourgeois complacency that allows corporate orthodoxy to eclipse all other values. What makes the movie remarkable is its ability to cloak such a political point of view in a story rich in ambiguities. While Vincent's bid to free himself from the suffocating grip of his job is clearly the movie's departure point, his pathetic wandering during his listless days off nonetheless suggests the oddly comforting role employment plays in defining one's place in society. Cantet's technique is subtly expressive: his camera captures a wintry world of glass and antiseptic modernity without resorting to strident stylistics. His handling of actors is equally superb -- the movie's depiction of middle-class family dynamics is unerring. In L'emploi du temps, Cantet has made the rare political film whose agenda is seamlessly subsumed in an engrossing human drama.