Time Out

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Recoing gives a performance that won't soon be forgotten. Neither will Time Out. It's a great movie.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Cantet has rich insights into this material, and brings them alive through sensitive acting and powerful filmmaking.

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.

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.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

A hushed, small-scale masterpiece that moves into the shadowlands of tragedy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Cantet's masterful study of a white-collar businessman in decline.

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.

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.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Recoing's performance is a sensitive portrayal of a man in the throes of an excruciating spiritual crisis.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Powerful.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Skip work to see it at the first opportunity.

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.

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.

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.

Film Threat Rich Cline

This is brilliant filmmaking.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Look carefully at that final scene; few happy endings have ever felt so downbeat.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Faultlessly truthful in its observations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Looks great but moves like molasses, is more interesting than truly involving.