Up until her fifth feature, French director Mia Hansen-Love specialized in stories about young people experiencing life-changing events, breakups, the deaths of loved ones or careers cut short by failure.
In Things to Come, she tackles the same themes from the perspective of an older character, with impressive maturity.
Isabelle Huppert stars as Nathalie, a middle-aged philosophy teacher who’s suddenly dumped by her longtime husband and forced to start all over again.
She goes through the doldrums, but eventually finds her footing in a tale that never panders to easy sentiments or offers pat answers to life’s toughest questions.
Things to Come offers one of Huppert’s most deeply intelligent performances in a career already full of genius.
There’s real thrill in seeing a French filmmaker take her place among her country’s greats.
