The title Things To Come evokes thoughts of a future full of marvels, but this story stays close to home. It has to do with a few years in the life of Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert), a high school philosophy teacher with nearly grown children and a husband who leaves her for another woman. In some ways, Things to Come is a typical French movie; it’s longer on atmosphere than on hard elements of story. Natalie doesn’t scale the highest mountain or sail the Seven Seas; she just lives her life, which may not be spectacular, but it’s hers and that’s marvelous enough.
Natalie teaches her classes. Her students are bright and engaged. Philosophy matters to her. Her apartment is full of books, which sustain her. During a student strike, she brings into class discussion of The Social Contract and Julie, or the New Heloise, by Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to get the students thinking seriously about what a strike means. Not many movies come along with characters for whom philosophy actually means something. Things to Come makes intellectual commitment essential to Natalie’s life, and because Natalie’s so vibrant, her ideas are lively and important.
What’s fascinating about Things to Come is that it shows the fabric of a life. Natalie’s a teacher in a full sense. A former student in his mid-30s has become a struggling writer. Natalie encourages him, prods his thinking. When his ideas take an unruly turn, she confronts him. When he and his girlfriend move to the mountains – he says he wants to make cheese and he’s listening to Woody Guthrie – Natalie visits, as a friend, but also still as a teacher, an intellectual challenge.
She does other things too. She cooks; she engages with her children. She’s the only child of a sick mother who needs care and attention. Natalie’s tough. When she tells her former student about the separation from her husband, she’s blunt. She says, “After 25 years he found another woman. There you have it.” A bit later she says that her life is full without the husband. But she feels the loss. She walks around the apartment alone and takes in the emptiness – and she also notices that he took not just his books but some of hers. But she fills the space again, with the things of her life.
All of this plays out in idealized settings. Paris is sunny and bright, and Natalie spends a lot of time outdoors. She walks places; she goes to cafes. Even though a good bit of Things to Come takes place in summer, Natalie – along with other characters – spends a remarkable amount of time in the parks. The paths are dappled with sunlight streaming through the trees; the sun glistens on the ponds. The Alps can be rainy, but when Natalie’s there the sun shines; the meadows look soft and inviting. Natalie takes a nap on a hillside.
It’s discordant. You might not expect a movie whose central events are a divorce and a cold dumping from a publisher to look so comfortable, but director Mia Hansen Love also jumps the pace. The film’s in constant motion. Characters – especially Natalie – walk fast. Sometimes Natalie runs. She’s in a car or on a train. And to quicken things more, the film makes abrupt cuts on action – so no movements either quite begin or end.
And at the center of everything is the actor Isabelle Huppert. She’s now 63; she’s been in movies since 1971, has made about 125 films, with six more in the pipeline. She’s worked with the best directors in France, and even starred in the misbegotten travesty of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. She’s as much the face of French cinema in these years as Jean Gabin was in the thirties, forties and fifties. In Things to Come, Huppert is placid, intellectually fervent, exhausted, curious, relentless, self-possessed, impeccable and overall quite magnificent. It’s astonishing to watch her. She is this movie.
