I only recently wrote a capsule for our most-anticipated-of-2024 feature where I acknowledge that, despite there being no true details on Olivier Assayas’ Hors du temps, it’s rather high on our list. Kismet-of-sorts (and reason for me to rewrite that capsule) that we now have a first plethora of details, including synopsis, stills, poster, and cast.
Vincent Macaigne stars, as has been known since last year, alongside Micha Lescot and Nora Hamzawi, seemingly playing an analogue for Assayas himself. So it’s easy to presume when the film, now referred to as Suspended Time, concerns a director and his music-journalist brother (as Assayas’ is, per our interview from 2014) locked in their childhood home with new partners during the pandemic. A Summer Hours spin with deeper shades of autobiography led by one of his great performers? Even in the realm of “deeply speculative and entirely unverified,” yes––absolutely our speed.
Synopsis, stills, and poster below:
April 2020––Lockdown. Etienne, a film director, and his brother Paul, a music journalist, are confined together in their childhood home with their new partners Morgane and Carole. Every room, every object, reminds them of their childhood, and the memories of the absents––their parents, their neighbors… This compels them to measure the distance that separates them from each other and the roots they share, those of their ground zero. As the world around them is becoming increasingly unsettling, unreality, and even a disturbing strangeness, invades their daily gestures and actions.
