Out Of Season

AroView: Guillaume Canet and Alba Rohrwacher provide the requisite chemistry in “Hors-Saison”, a masterfully directed mid-life romance about two former lovers who unexpectedly cross paths in a sleepy holiday town in northern France.

It’s winter. Approaching his 50th birthday, successful screen actor Mathieu (Canet) is facing a crisis of confidence; just weeks out from his much-anticipated stage debut, he has fled rehearsals to check into a luxury health spa on the Brittany coast, leaving both the play’s perplexed director and his wife back home in Paris. But being a major A-list celebrity, it’s impossible for Mathieu to lay low… recognised everywhere he goes, the hotel staff and fellow guests are both ecstatic and intrigued about his presence, and the requests for selfies never end.

Then suddenly, Mathieu receives a text message from Alice (Rohrwacher), a woman he’d dated fifteen years prior, who’s heard he’s in town; she’s now a wife and mother who by chance lives nearby. They agree to meet for lunch, each evidently torn by the manner in which they parted…

“Much like Celine Song’s Past Lives, Brizé explores the infinite complexities of human behavior and their corresponding relationships via a simple format which yields formidably poignant results.” ~Nicholas Bell, IonCinema

“An off-season, out-of-fashion and, above all, profoundly accurate film.” ~Olivier De Bruyn, Marianne