When Fall is Coming

Film: When Fall Is Coming

Director: Francois Ozon

Release date: France, October 2, 2024

Distributor: Diaphana Distribution

In a scene towards the end of When Fall Is Coming, one character observes wearily of her son, “he wants to do right, but always does wrong.” It is the perfect summation of the motivations and actions of virtually every character in Francois Ozon’s film. Set in a small rural village in Burgundy, this restrained but devastating film focuses on ordinary characters who make questionable choices, often with enduring consequences.

The film opens with a church service and the priest lecturing the congregation on the inherently sinful nature of human beings, notably women. He concludes with an acknowledgement that although Mary Magdalene was a sinner, she was “forgiven because she gave much love.” This observation is portentous, foreshadowing the drama that subsequently unfolds.

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) and Marie-Claude (Josiane ­Balasko) are two older women who have shared many experiences during their lifelong friendship. It is eventually revealed that is a friendship that was forged during their careers as sex workers. We see them having coffee, shopping, picking mushrooms (more of that later) and going about their daily lives in the village (See Figure 1).

The two women reflect on the challenges they have faced and in particular the difficult relationships with their respective children. Michelle supports Marie-Claude through her son Vincent’s (Pierre Lottin) incarceration and release from prison. Marie-Claude reciprocates when Michelle’s fractious daughter Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier) upsets her mother by withdrawing access to her son Lucas. As Marie-Claude remarks, as parents, “we failed miserably—we failed with our kids.”

Michelle’s desire to support Vincent, “who is like a son to me,” leads her to provide him with odd jobs after his release from prison, and then a substantial amount of money to set up a bar. Marie-Claude has lost trust in her son and is angry with Michelle for enabling him to potentially make more poor choices.

Ozon’s oeuvre is characterized by nuanced French dramas, musicals and comedies and this film is arguably his most compelling. As writer and director, his central characters are both utterly ordinary and bewilderingly opaque. Back stories are revealed gradually; motivations are often unclear and actions never predictable. When we first meet her, Michelle’s daughter Valerie is brittle and manipulative. She already has ownership of her mother’s apartment but demands she hand over the house too. She taunts her mother about her increasing age and weight gain and uses her son as emotional leverage, knowing how much her mother loves him. But we gradually come to understand the reasons for her combativeness.

Vincent is clearly damaged goods and radiates repressed violence but there is complexity to his back story too. Unlike Valerie, he seems to have come to terms with his mother’s past but bitterly recalls an absent father. “I didn’t have a real father…he just gave us money; money is not love.” In a brief but poignant scene, Michelle instructs him to discard all Lucas’s toys but then observes him from a distance playing lovingly with them instead. In a disturbing irony, it is Vincent who becomes a stable father figure in young Lucas’s life.

There are a series of truly shocking moments in this film, made all the more memorable by the mundane way in which they are presented. Vincent’s attempt to repair the relationship between Michelle and Valerie has fatal consequences. Michelle’s response in covering up his actions is breathtaking in its calculated betrayal of her daughter. When Marie-Claude observes that her son has good motivations but always makes the wrong choices, Michelle responds pragmatically that “what is important is that he wants to do right.”

Her nonchalant admission to her friend that “when I think of all her (Valerie’s) anger, I am relieved she is gone,” literally stops Marie-Claude in her tracks. It has an equally powerful impact on the viewer and renders an earlier scene retrospectively more sinister. When a meal Michelle prepares that includes hand-picked mushrooms puts Valerie in hospital, her daughter accuses her of trying to kill her and labels her “dangerous.”

The benign rural setting, muted palette and understated moments of humor are in stark contrast to the persistent undercurrent of tension in the film. I found myself gripping the armrests of the cinema seat in a white-knuckle experience more intense than anything an action film could deliver. In this respect, When Fall is Coming recalls two equally memorable earlier films, the German feature The Lives of Others (Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) and Australian film, Lantana ­(Lawrence, 2001). All three are characterized by a restrained directorial approach to morally complex and emotionally conflicted characters and situations.

When Fall Is Coming poses difficult questions for the viewer. Is it wrong to admit you are relieved your daughter is no longer alive? Should one lie in order to cover up a crime if it protects the future health and wellbeing of a child? Does a failing memory absolve you from responsibility for reprehensible actions? Should a police officer drop a potential murder case in the interests of keeping an already traumatized family together?

Characters of each generation in the film, from young Lucas to his grandmother Michelle, confront these scenarios, but at its heart, When Fall is Coming is a portrait of a sustained and sustaining female friendship. The film offers a striking contrast between two women who ultimately make very different decisions about what they will settle for in older age. In the course of the film, Michelle and Marie-Claude both have a reckoning of sorts. The latter reflects with honesty on her shortcomings, acknowledges her son’s failings and confronts her terminal cancer diagnosis with equanimity. In contrast, Michelle’s knowing naivety enables her to manipulate those around her. Her fierce love for her grandson motivates a series of dubious decisions and Faustian pacts but she shows few signs of genuine introspection. She lives an uncomplicated life into advanced older age. Ozon’s film explores moral relativism in all its complexity but makes no judgements.

References

Henckel von Donnersmarck F. (2006). (Director). The Lives of Others. [Motion picture] Buena Vista International.

Lawrence R. (2001). (Director). Lantana. [Motion picture] Palace Films.

Ozon F. (2024). (Director) When Fall Is Coming. [Motion picture] Diaphana Distribution.

 

– Rose Capp

Oxford University Press / The Gerontological Society of America. Reproduced with permission of the author. Originally published in The Gerontologist, , Volume 65, Issue 11, November 2025, gnaf218, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaf218