Things to Come: Resisting Melodrama
I’ve been watching a lot of contemporary French cinema lately. I feel like whenever I say that it sounds like I’m trying to brag. It’s probably because I’m trying to brag.
The best thing I’ve seen is Mia Hansen-Love’s Things to Come. It’s about a philosophy professor, Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert), who goes through a bit of an existential crisis when her home life falls apart.
That description makes Things to Come sound like a domestic melodrama. Were it made in the U.S., maybe it would’ve been a domestic melodrama. But it’s not, because it wasn’t.
Things to Come treats the (seemingly) mundane and the (supposedly) momentous with equal attention. Maybe that’s because the protagonist is a philosophy teacher — she’s cultivated a well-rounded perspective through years of existential inquiry. Or maybe it’s because the French are less melodramatic than Americans. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
I’ve watched a lot of Hansen-Love’s movies the last few weeks. I’ve also torn through her former partner’s filmography (French director Olivier Assayas). In both their films, things happen: hearts are broken. Loves are lost. Dreams are out of reach. Kristen Stewart’s perfect (off topic but true). But then people move on. Or maybe they just act like they do but actually don’t. The point is that there’s no hierarchy of experience. Everything is life. Life is everything. Kristen Stewart’s perfect.
Back to Things to Come. The plot trigger — and I use the word “plot” loosely — comes when Nathalie’s husband admits to having an affair. Nathalie responds to this information ambivalently: “why tell me? Couldn’t [you] keep it a secret?” No glasses are shattered. No cheeks are slapped. Adultery is not the life-changing, movie-altering sin you’re expecting it to be.
Nathalie’s stoicism is somewhat performative. She has moments of genuine emotion. But when she relays news of her marital troubles to a former student/mentee-turned-friend of hers, she treats the issue similarly matter-of-factly: “No reason to pity me. I’m lucky to be fulfilled intellectually. It’s enough to be happy.”
Is it? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that you kind of believe her. This isn’t the inciting incident in some mid-life crisis where Nathalie learns that she needs a man in addition to her philosophy books. Nathalie chose to prioritize her intellectual life long before learning about her husband’s affair. She’s going to keep on doing what she’s been doing. She’s set in her ways. Kind of like how my dad’s going to keep on tucking his shirt into his boxers.
Anyway, remember a couple paragraphs ago when I mentioned her student/mentee-turned-friend? Well, his name’s Fabien. And Fabien’s super hot.
Fabien and Nathalie have definite chemistry, despite a 3–4ish decade age difference. There’s an opportunity to explore a cross-generational love here that is never acted upon (we’re talking like millennial and baby boomer). Nathalie and Fabien’s relationship is purely intellectual. In that way, it’s the usual stuff: old vs young. Realism vs idealism. Practicality vs radicality. Jordan vs LeBron.
You’re waiting the entire movie for them to duke it out on the intellectual battlefield. And it seems like it’s going to happen. Nathalie goes to visit Fabien at his anarchist commune (don’t ask). They’re alone for breakfast. Fabien calls out Nathalie. He wants “action to be compatible with thought.” He says it isn’t what she teaches. Nathalie tells him he’s wrong. The boulder’s rolling down the hill. It’s gaining steam. Watch out! Then Nathalie says revolution isn’t her goal — she just wants to help kids think for themselves. And then she calmy walks away. It turns out the boulder’s a bean bag chair.
Like everything else, this moment will come and go. Why linger and indulge some pointless, abstract, philosophical debate?
I read this really pretentious essay collection recently by a really pretentious writer (Against Everything by Mark Greif). Once you weed through the semicolons and SAT words, Greif makes some fascinating points about the “modern crisis of experience,” something he defines as an ultimately fruitless quest for “special experiences” you collect to “furnish your storeroom of memories.”
According to Greif, this crisis can (maybe) be remedied by a change in our cultural consumption. “Would it be too much to ask,” he asks, “for books in which there is no conflict and no disaster but mere daily occurrences”? What about television shows, he continues, where people “go about their business in the dull but reassuring knowledge that nothing is going to be very different than the day before?” “What would remain” is not “drama, or experience, but life.”
What would remain, I’d add, is movies like Things to Come. Nathalie isn’t collecting experiences or searching for meaning. She’s living. And she’s existing. And watching her navigate life’s everyday monotony is exhilarating.
I’m not really sure why. But that’s a question for another day.
