Time Out is one in a series of European films this decade has produced—including Le Couperet, El Principio de Arquimedes, La Graine et le Mulet and Cantet’s own earlier movie, Ressources Humaines—about the agony and desperation occasioned by being unemployed, but also about the struggle in the aftermath of a layoff to either maintain an identity that has been shaped by the corporate world or to forge a new one.

The Premise of Time Out

Sympathetic, 40ish Vincent (Aurélien Recoing) is downsized from his corporate job. Rather than tell his wife Muriel (Karin Viard) and their teenagers (played by Cantet’s own real-life children) about this unfortunate wrinkle, however, he methodically and yet somewhat surreally creates and implements a Ponzi scheme.

Simultaneously, Vincent crafts a second believable but equally fictional life for himself as a United Nations executive—less difficult than it sounds, as he lives near the Swiss border and takes pains to carefully study the UN’s current outreach program in the Third World, the better to believe his own story and to be believed.

Ironically, Vincent’s job in keeping his various fictional lives up and running requires much more skill, industry and daring than his corporate job ever did. How long can he maintain his deception? How far will he go to avoid coming to terms with “reality,” whatever that is?

Psychological Nuances of Time Out

Although the story itself, co-written by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campinillo (the duo also wrote the recent Cannes winner, The Class (Entre les Murs) and 2005's Vers le Sud) is suspenseful on its face, it is the psychological underpinnings that keep the viewer entranced.

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