Monday Night Film Series: Things To Come (L’avenir)

Ascendant French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden, Goodbye First Love) directs the great Isabelle Huppert in this delicate and affecting tale about a middle-aged professor, embracing the “radical” notion that women’s lives don’t end after 40.

Nathalie (Huppert) is a dedicated and demanding teacher, wife, and mother. She runs her relationships with the same rigour she brings to her study of philosophy. But when Nathalie’s husband announces that he’s leaving her for another woman, the meticulously crafted structures on which her existence is founded begin to crumble. Truly on her own for the first time, except for a less-than-grateful cat, Nathalie is daunted by this new world — until she finds an unlikely friend in a former student, the radical young communist Fabien (Roman Kolinka).

A softly meandering narrative filled with moments of lightness, loneliness, and hope, the film provides a winning marriage between Hansen-Løve’s graceful filmmaking and Huppert’s understated, but always impressive blend of vulnerability and strength. Things to Come is heartbreaking but never sentimental, wry but never ironic. It shows that, even though life may never get any easier, it nevertheless offers ceaseless opportunities for growth.

Things To Come | Monday Night Film Series | Tilley Hall, Room 102, UNB Campus | February 6, 2017 – 7:30pm | See full schedule