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Time to leave

Written by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Inspired by 1950s Douglas Sirk made-for-TV movie melodrama that center on the suffering of women, contemporary French auteur Francois Ozon gives the formula a modern spin. Here, a Parisian Gay fashion photographer named Romain{Melvil Poupaud) is diagnosed with inoperable cancer and is given merely a month to live. He chose not to confide the prospects of his imminent death neither to his family nor to his adoring boyfriend(Christian Sengewald).

He represses this trauma, stifling it with anger that leads him to bash his own existence and that ends up with him with him picking on his estranged sister, a single parent. Soon, he is alienating everyone in sight, and start to embrace isolation as his lover. Only one other person seems able to share his inner struggle: his grandmother(the great Jeanne Moreau), who has her own tender rapport with him. As a result, all his rage gradually shifts into an acceptance of what life has to offer. His demeanor softens, even as he involves himself in a ménage à trois with a waitress he'd met at a drive-in restaurant, and her infertile husband.

Every attempt he makes at connecting with others seems an extraordinary thing Romain has no desire to be a hero; his experience are presented as miracles existing in reality. while certain scenes seem rather contrived, they never succumb to sentimentalism or any lack of emotion. Ozon create thought-provoking character who resonate with real feeling, resulting in a film that slowly sends it's message and keeps a somber subject upbeat. He uses a particularly intriguing approach of letting the main character be seen from another dimension through photography as it progresses.

Cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie shoots lots of close-ups that preserve the tension and reveals the inner feeling of the protagonist. This is a career-changing performance for Poupaud, who is hardly ever absent from the screen. He shows a great capacity for emotion as he shift from being an egoistic character to an ordinary, lovable child(though only in his mind).
Flashbacks to Romain's childhood show him slowly absorbing the serenity of his short life. In the final scene, in which he lies on a sandy beach, the scenery mirrors the calmness of his mind in childhood when things are accepted just as they come and are let go. As he looks over the hauntingly broad ocean, only times is running···.