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TIP OF THE WEEK
Time Out

Ray Pride

(L'emploi du temps) Laurent Cantet's two films to date--the first was "Human Resources"--are bedeviling explorations of how work defines our lives. I admired his first, but "Time Out," the story of a Frenchman who fabricates a nonexistent job when he is dismissed from a position he's held for eleven years, is the kind of film that keeps you wondering two things: What the hell is going to happen next and why are these cool, placid surfaces so unnerving? Aurelien Recoing has a hangdog face animated by inappropriate smiles. You can't read him. Has he cracked? Is he a superb con man? Is he merely crazed? He lies to everyone: wife, kids. He invents a job in Switzerland. He disappears for days and weeks. He borrows money from his father for an apartment, but actually to further his deception. More money's required, so more cons. He drives. He says that's all he liked about his pervious job, some sort of unspecified consultancy: driving. He'd miss appointments because he would miss turnoffs, lost in his head, in his car, his solitary, unspecified life. Beautiful and chilling, it has a final scene to freeze your blood, no matter which of the several interpretations you wind up holding. Effective chamber score by Jocelyn Pook ("Eyes Wide Shut").

"Time Out" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2002-04-18)

Also by Ray Pride

TIP OF THE WEEK
Roger Michell, director of "Persuasion" and "Notting Hill," shows another side to his sensibility with this rich and masterful story (co-written by Michael Tolkin) of two men--cocky lawyer Ben Affleck, weary insurance salesman and alcoholic Samuel L. Jackson--who collide on New York's FDR expressway and proceed, during the course of the day, to try and destroy each other.
(2002-04-11)

CRAZY LOVE
In John McKay's debut feature, "Crush," Andie MacDowell is Kate, lonely headmistress of a private school in England's Cotswolds. She and her two best friends, all in their forties, meet weekly to moan and glory in their failures with men despite their professional success.
(2002-04-11)

TIP OF THE WEEK
If John Hughes were so bold as to make "Magnolia," after reading Philip K. Dick while tripping, the result wouldn't be one-tenth as good as "Donnie Darko," writer-director Richard Kelly's bold American original, a 1988-set teen satire that offers up the dissonant spectacle of twenty-eight days in the life of your essential suburban paranoid-schizophrenic teen (Jake Gyllenhaal).
(2002-04-04)

TIP OF THE WEEK
If the only thing Hal Hartley had gotten right about his "Beauty and the Beast" riff was his multitude of long looks at Sarah Polley's dreamy-scheming face, I'd be pleased already.
(2002-03-28)

PANIC BUTTONS
(2002-03-28)

GLOVE AND MONEY
(2002-03-21)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-03-14)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-03-07)

LETTING GO
(2002-02-21)

SCOLD WAR
(2002-02-14)

AUTUMNAL CRAFT
(2002-02-07)

SPRUNG
(2002-02-07)



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