Time to Leave

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Another worthy performance comes from Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's a magnificent miniature, a supremely tender work that's full of emotion and even sentimentality.

Newsweek David Ansen

This is the most personal, deeply felt film from the gifted director of "Under the Sand" and "Swimming Pool." Ozon leaches his melodrama of all sentimentality, and moves us all the more.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Time to Leave just might be Ozon's best work yet. He tackles a sensitive, off-putting subject with a dignity that will put viewers at ease. Poupaud connects as the dying man and Moreau is - Moreau, a French national treasure.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The film rests entirely on Poupaud's shoulders, and he rises to the demands of a complex, deeply unsympathetic role.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Time to Leave may not have made me cry, but it's affecting nonetheless.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What makes the film intriguing, and somewhat off-putting, is that Romain is deliberately portrayed as a heel; he strains his relations with his lover and his family, except for his grandmother (Moreau), to the breaking point.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Time to Leave subordinates narrative to mood. Since the end of the story is never in doubt, the only surprises lie in the particulars of Romain’s behavior and the nuances of sorrow, determination and doubt that pass over Mr. Poupaud’s face.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

As with all Ozon's work, Time to Leave resounds with grace notes. The wide-screen cinematography by Jeanne Lapoirie offsets (or maybe disguises) the movie's narrow scope, and there's something private--withholding--in Poupaud's beauty that gives his misanthropy a touch of mystery.

The Hollywood Reporter Staff (Not credited)

A short and succinct film but it lingers long in the memory.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The same quiet ecstasy that made the final moments of "Under the Sand" so moving works on the viewer here too, inspiring joy and naked grief in equal measure.

Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour

As with any Ozon film, Time to Leave comes across with unexpected moments of illuminated stillness.

Washington Post Philip Kennicott

The splendid, painterly melodramas of Douglas Sirk lurk behind every shot, but the tone is essentially pre-Raphaelite, sexy and cold.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Ozon's disappointing new film Time To Leave is his "The Flower Of My Secret," a Douglas Sirk-inspired weepie about a terminal cancer victim making amends, but it's a little too sentimental and square even by his recent standards.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Moreau's few ripe scenes are choice, and she spices up the joint with her gravelly voice of je ne regrette rien.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Francois Ozon's Time to Leave reps one of the helmer's most straightforward, but perhaps least interesting pics.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

Time to Leave amounts simply to a semi-thoughtful disease-of-the-week weepie, admirable in its restraint but shying from the terror of the situation.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

2005 French feature by the highly uneven Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool, Under the Sand), who doesn't have much to say about his subject that's fresh.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

Not up to Ozon's standards.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Time to Leave is an unintended litmus test for lovers of foreign films.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

This oddly dispassionate film about a young man dying of cancer is the French antidote to those Hollywood weepies in which the heroine courageously faces her own mortality with every hair in place.