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Le temps qui reste

Sunday, January 22, 2006 ★ 02:41 ★ Category Films

Romain (Melvil Poupaud) is a young homosexual fashion photographer in Paris. When his doctor diagnoses him with cancer, Romain is told he only has a couple of months to live. Shocked, Romain ponders who to tell, how to tell and what to do… Le temps qui reste (English title: Time to Leave) is French cineast François Ozon’s latest film. It shows the last few months of Romain’s life, doing things he never did before, changing his opinion on several subjects and changing the world around him.

I should notice some people might be a bit shocked by the gay sex that happens in the film. Not really explicit, but still, in some countries (like the US) people are relatively unused to explicit sex. Sex scenes are always a bit more explicit in French cinema (just like in Dutch cinema) than they are in American films, and I don’t think that’s bad at all. While, for example, American cineasts try their best to show just the female body (carefully positioning the camera to hide the male body from view), French films usually look more natural to me, showing both naked men and women. The result is that your attention is not drawn just to the female body, but to the picture as a whole. At least to me this makes me feel a lot less like a voyeur, a feeling I do get when watching sex scenes in American films. Okay, enough about sex scenes… why should I care? I don’t like American films anyway most of the time.

Le temps qui reste

Romain shaves off his hair during the film. A shame… he looked so much better before!

Another recommendation: Swimming Pool (Ozon, 2003). Although totally different, this one is also worth seeing.