Suspended Time ★★★

These days, when we talk about COVID films, we’re usually talking about movies made under strict rules of pandemic-era filmmaking. A small crew, a few actors, no extras, a limited number of locations. Sometimes, as with Radu Jude’s fantastic Bad Luck Banging, or Looney Porn, that kind of COVID film is also one where the pandemic plays a role – where characters are coping with social distancing, mask-wearing, as well as the strange new virus. But by and large, filmmakers haven’t been that interested in telling stories about those days of living in lockdown, fearing your neighbor’s cough, wiping down your groceries, logging your kid into a virtual classroom, and so forth.

But Olivier Assayas’ Suspended Time, his first feature film since 2019’s Wasp Network, is a COVID film in that literal sense – a movie that attempts to capture that lockdown headspace, in all its elliptical messiness. It’s about two middle-aged brothers and their girlfriends quarantining together in the same countryside house that the two men grew up in. Or rather, that’s the set-up, what Suspended Time is actually about is more complicated and even somewhat ethereal, as Assayas is shooting the film in his family home and putting a lot of his own personal history into the characters of the two brothers. While there’s some drama and comedic bickering going on among the quarantined couples, it’s largely a scenario for Assayas to kick around some ideas about art, legacy, relationships, the ghosts of the past, and how questions about the future take on a different meaning when you’re stuck in a weird, nebulous present.

Of the two brothers, the primary Assayas stand-in is Vincent Macaigne, who plays a filmmaker by the name of Paul who recently ended a long-term relationship with another filmmaker, with whom he has a twelve-year-old daughter. Yes, this is the exact scenario Assayas has with the filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, and I’ll venture to guess that you’ll be more inclined to enjoy this deeply autobiographical movie if you’ve already seen Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, which offered a veiled peek into her complicated relationship with Assayas. But really, this isn’t the first time the director has blurred the autofiction line, nor is it the first time Macaigne has played a version of Assayas. In the recent, and hugely entertaining, TV version of Irma Vep, Macaigne played the role of a beleaguered director trying to keep a chaotic movie production in order. His wonderful, anxiety-ridden performance was based on Assayas, and he essentially carries it right over into Suspended Time.

The other brother, Ėtienne, is played by Micha Lescot, who actually looks a lot more like Assayas, with his grey hair, thin frame, and sharp features. If Paul represents the neurotic id, then Ėtienne represents the ego – the more self-assured part of Assayas, who is confident in his values and would rather not be stuck having to deal with his brother’s annoying doubts, phobias and compulsions. Ėtienne is in the music business, which allows him to represent the director’s lifelong obsession with rock and roll. A simpler art form perhaps, but one that is also rooted in the past. At first, Ėtienne presents a cool and cocky exterior, but we come to see that he’s not immune to the COVID chaos, and the questions of relevancy and adaptability that come with it. While the germophobe Paul is more outwardly distressed by the coronavirus, Ėtienne is the one who’s more resistant to change, making him the more existentially threatened of the two.

In the middle of this dynamic are Paul’s younger girlfriend Morgane, and Ėtienne’s younger girlfriend Carole. In both cases, these relationships are the result of recent changes in the brothers’ lives, and are being tested by the sudden confinement. Carole was Ėtienne’s mistress for a while, and only recently have they been able to be together openly. Morgane and Paul have been seeing each other for a couple years, but have never been together for any prolonged period of time. (It’s mentioned that Morgane visited Paul when he was working in Cuba, a reference to the production of Wasp Network). And in both cases, these younger women are forces of calm, level-headed, empathetic understanding for the men. They’re able to move through the house without the baggage of personal history, and they’re able to help Paul and Ėtienne see each other with a more clear-eyed understanding.

But for the most part, we’re seeing things through Paul’s eyes. He’s our narrator, laying the groundwork for how this idyllic provincial home can actually be oppressive – weighed down with generations of dysfunction and shelves upon shelves of obsessively organized books. Since not much happens dramatically in the movie, Suspended Time benefits from a singular perspective, to keep it from feeling too shambolic. Some of the most interesting parts are hearing Paul’s inner thoughts, such as his desire to completely rethink the way movies are made, to find a way to inject the artform with a more painterly, impressionistic approach.

In a way, Suspended Time is just that. It’s Olivier Assayas experimenting with a different form of moviemaking – one that relies less on narrative drama and more on capturing fleeting moments and emotions that, in the best scenes, build upon each other in a meaningful way. While this is certainly a swerve in his filmography, the question of artistic relevance, and ‘where do we go from here?’, is certainly picking up the thread that was being pulled in Non-Fiction. And fans of Summer Hours will find a familiar ruminative vibe over the meaning of objects and the heavy weight of inheritance.

But what makes Suspended Time really stand out is its ability to capture the subtle, messy specifics of the pandemic mental state. Yes, we can all remember the tragedies we experienced and the anxieties we felt during COVID, but do you remember the hopes that were also in the air? The feeling that something might change for the better because of how the lockdowns brought so many problems of shortsightedness and unsustainability to the forefront? Do you remember reconnecting with nature and rediscovering the joy of silence? I still think about all of these things – the pleasures, possibilities, and the missed opportunities that came with stepping away from the autopilot we were stuck on leading up to 2020. Suspended Time achieves a peculiar, understated power in capturing and preserving this very specific and unusual moment in recent history.

I’m not sure it adds up to a whole lot. This will likely be nobody’s favorite Assayas movie. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a pivot point in his career. Maybe this is the movie that signifies a new late-period chapter where he’s getting more personal and taking a more holistic approach to his moviemaking – one that is more spontaneous and Malickian in its appreciation of nature and of allowing the story to come together as part of the process. Or, maybe, just like the COVID experience was for so many, Suspended Time will be the strange blip that gets memory holed so that we can get back to business as usual. As someone who likes when filmmakers shift gears at different points during a long career, I hope that isn’t the case.