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Time Out

Universal acclaim
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Foreign
Written by:
Robin Campillo
Laurent Cantet
Directed by: Laurent Cantet
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 29, 2002
DVD: January 14, 2003
Running Time: 132 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for sensuality
Starring Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet, Jean-Pierre Mangeot, Monique Mangeot, Nicolas Kalsch, Marie Cantet, and Félix Cantet
After losing his job, Vincent (Recoing) can't bring himself to tell his wife (Viard) and children, so he wanders around France during the day, while they think he's at work, and finds himself on a moral and ethical journey of conscience that challenges the notions he's formed about life. (ThinkFilm)
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Recoing gives a performance that won't soon be forgotten. Neither will Time Out. It's a great movie.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Cantet has rich insights into this material, and brings them alive through sensitive acting and powerful filmmaking.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
This movie makes one grateful that a serious European art cinema still exists. [15 April 2002, p. 88]
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
There's piercing sadness, and fury, too, in this Everyman's isolation, and Cantet is singularly skilled at evoking the universal condition of such tragic ordinariness.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's a chilly, lonely introduction to a man who has effectively stepped out of the social world of adult responsibility.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
A hushed, small-scale masterpiece that moves into the shadowlands of tragedy.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Cantet's masterful study of a white-collar businessman in decline.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Recoing's performance is chillingly low-key -- sometimes you can swear that he believes his own fictions -- and Livrozet, making his film debut, has a perfect long-in-the-tooth charm.
Newsweek David Ansen
It has the stately, well-crafted anxiety of a Hitchcock movie, except that the protagonist and antagonist are one and the same.
Slate David Edelstein
It's like an Ingmar Bergman film with the loss of religious faith replaced with a sort of socioeconomic nebulousness.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Vincent is played masterfully by Aurelien Recoing, who gives him a sort of as-if anomie; this haunted hero is so detached that he may not realize he has no real life to be detached from.
Variety David Rooney
Theater veteran Recoing is utterly compelling. Both the script and the resourceful, subtle actor provide enormous insight into the troubled character.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Recoing's performance is a sensitive portrayal of a man in the throes of an excruciating spiritual crisis.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Skip work to see it at the first opportunity.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Leighton Klein
Cantet's script and direction are flawless, and, matched step-for-step by Jocelyn Pook's mournful score, he builds the tension to near unbearable levels.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
"Human Resources" was a good, straightforward tale, but Time Out is better. It's haunting. It's like a poem.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
If the movie has a flaw, it's that the working out of Vincent's psychology is too perfect.
New Times (L.A.) David Ehrenstein
A subtle mood piece in which a man's collapse is examined so rigorously that one almost hopes for a murder to come along and break the tension.
TV Guide Ken Fox
Look carefully at that final scene; few happy endings have ever felt so downbeat.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
Recoing's meta-performance is an unemphatic marvel, his placid countenance stretched tight over telltale flickers: a quickly suppressed smirk of incredulous delight, a nervous twitch of chagrin, an abrupt pang of guilt.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
I admire the closing scenes of the film, which seem to ask whether our civilization offers a cure for Vincent's complaint.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A well-crafted indictment of the dark side of the modern work ethic.
ReelViews James Berardinelli
For those with the patience to sit through this kind of unhurried motion picture, Time Out offers a compelling character study of an individual under the kind of strain we can all relate to.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
This is a documentarylike film about a man who creates a castle in the air and then moves right in, the "Harold and the Purple Crayon" of the workplace.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The movie isn't a thriller, but it has the tension of a thriller, and its cool, icy tone, deliberate pacing and clean, antiseptic lines are reminiscent of Kubrick and Antonioni.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Looks great but moves like molasses, is more interesting than truly involving.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
JF Harrumph gave it a 10:
Um let me make an immediate point that everyone, including the critics, seems to have missed: the movie isn't about existentential crisis and high falutin abstract concepts, it's about the mental illness of the Vincent character. It's about a condition of deep denial. It happens and it's real. The movie is highly effective, and the content of the movie demanded the slow creepy pacing, anything otherwise would have been ineffective. I was knocked out by it.
Buttered Popcorn gave it a 6:
I think Paula W.'s review about hit it on the head. I kept waiting to find a little something more in this movie, but it just didn't come. The character who plays the smuggling kingpin stole the show.
Ryan gave it a 10:
The ending makes me cry. Its heartbreaking irony, intense emotions, and beautiful music are just too much. No other film in 2002 came close to achieving the power of this film.
Paula W. gave it a 7:
The concept is promising, and the movie gets off to a good start: a laid-off executive drives around all day, calling his wife at intervals to tell her he's in meetings, covering the mouthpiece when the kids at the playground get too noisy. It can't last and he digs himself deeper and deeper in an attempt to keep up appearances at home. This is a painful story to watch, and the pitch-perfect, unflinching acting makes it even more so. But the pain is ratcheted up to unbearable and, I think, unnnecessary levels by the glacial pace at which the story moves. In many scenes we watch in real time as the protagonist pulls off the highway and into a parking lot, in silence. The visuals in the movie are stylish enough in an anti-stylish way: cramped, flat, indoors, in the car or under a cloudy sky, but nothing that justifies holding each shot this long. The 132 minutes of the movie seem as long as the entire seven months of the character's ordeal. This may be the point, to make you feel the character's pain and bewilderment as he feels it, but that's more pain than I care to volunteer for.
Jim L. gave it a 3:
Boring. Didn't find anything - characters, plot or actions- of interest here.
Klondike V. gave it a 1:
this movie was terrible! it felt like a long slow death... and i'm usually a fan of "art" movies! i can't believe what high marks and praise people have given it here.. the main character was a psychopath! there was nothing sympathetic about him!
Chad S. gave it a 10:
"Time Out" is an art film. "Amelie" is a commercial film that just happens to be from France. I'm not knocking the Jean-Pierre Jeunet charmer but this amazing movie by Laurent Cantet is the French import people should be going ga-ga over. Cantet nails scene after scene like when Vincent (Aurelian Recoing) parks his car for overnight lodging in the lot after a meeting with his friend/client, or when our vagabond walks through the United Nations headquarters. All those lies Vincent has to maintain, and yet so functional with loved ones. Recoing is superb. I also like how "Time Out" has the same storyline as an episode of "The Flintstones" in which Fred becomes The Gravelberry Pie King. Well, there goes my credibility.
