Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert) is a philosophy professor although a student strike is challenging the faculty. She is married but her husband reveals his cheating. Worst yet, he has to tell her as he moves out of the house. Her kids are moving on. Her disturbed mother keeps pulling her into her life. Her former student reconnects with her. As each part of her life is severed, she finds life in her new freedom.

This is very french especially how Nathalie reacts to her husband's revelation. It doesn't have to be melodramatic but I would like for more drama. The danger is never that high although there is surely some emotional dangers. Huppert's classy acting keeps the movie compelling. I would like to have her disconnecting happen in the first half hour. Instead, it's dragged over an hour and there isn't enough time for her to find herself. It's the shortest of freedom rides. It's understated. I prefer something more dramatic.

"L'avenir" is a French(language) movie from this year (2016) and these 100 minutes are the most recent work by fairly young French writer and director Mia Hansen-Løve. From start to finish, it is a showpiece for established actress Isabelle Huppert and she plays a teacher, who struggles with her marriage, with her family, with her work and with life in general. We see her at her job quickly and find out these are tumultuous times. But this profession-related thing is just one aspect and afterward we never see her at school again, which surprised me a bit. Instead we watch her struggle with her cheating husband and with the way she tries to adapt to the life of one of her protégés. This was also one of the film's weaknesses. Firstly I found the actor who plays the latter extremely bland and forgettable, which was a deal-breaker in the negative sense as he plays possibly the biggest supporting character. Then also, the way the film tried to make us curious if there will be a romantic relationship between the two felt fairly cringeworthy and clumsy and the film really delivered in very few other areas beyond that suspense. The whole way the romance and attraction aspect was written in here was not to my liking. The attempts of the filmmaker to describe Huppert as a strong-willed and attractive yet very fragile women felt extremely false and generic to me. There are moments when the film has sub-par television level at best and as a whole it was disappointing for a big screen release. The weakest moment of the film was probably the cinema scene, which added absolutely nothing except the fact that they wanted to make sure we don't forget how desirable Huppert('s character) was. The cat scenes and the solid ending could not really make up for all the flaws in this film. France is definitely among the most creative countries right now when it comes to filmmaking, both quality and quantity, but this film of slightly over 1.5 hours we have here adds very little (almost nothing) in that regard. I also found Huppert underwhelming, even if she obviously suffers from the generic way her character was written. It's not a question of how likable her character is eventually. It is more about the fact that in this film there is nothing she hasn't done before and usually she's done it way better. Quite a disappointment and I give "Things to Come" a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

On one level this is yet another Master Class in Screen Acting delivered by Isabelle Huppert, long established as the Mistress of the Master Class, and if necessary I'll settle for that for we devotees of the sublime Huppert have long learned to endure her wayward choices which sometimes verge on the bizarre, in her career-long quest to both stretch herself as an actress whilst simultaneously giving a break to fledgling writers/directors. It would, of course, be churlish not to applaud someone who can select from the cream of writing/directing talent, and opts instead to lend her illustrious name to lesser talents but I, for one, wish she would 'discover' an Alexandra Leclerc (Les Soeurs Fachees) more often and give her admirers something entertaining. With Things To Come she has found something of a middle ground and in a movie in which nothing happens all at once she keeps us engrossed effortlessly.