The struggle to accept one's mortality has had a long and melancholic tradition in the cinema, and the man whose days are numbered by illness has appeared time and again as the locus of this struggle. But has there ever been a struggle quite as wilfully self-effacing as Romain's (Melvil Poupaud), the protagonist, if by no means the hero, of François Ozon's Time to Leave? Struck down by cancer so advanced he's told he has less than a five percent chance of survival, Romain sets about burning his bridges, hiding his illness from family and friends, and attempting to die in self-imposed solitude. That this drive towards isolation and anonymity begins to appear, as the film progresses, not as an expression of anger so much as it does one of acceptance—a desire to rejoin the flow—is hardly surprising, and, as such, is perhaps also a trifle disappointing.

Notwithstanding the admittedly significant difference between Romain's trajectory and those of his cinematic forebears—his desire to leave no trace of himself where others have wished to leave a legacy they could be proud of—one can't help but feel that we've seen all this before: the visual austerity, the quasi-religious soundtrack, the seemingly preordained character arc of anger-denial-acceptance. Despite the beauty of the final sequence—and the last four edits, those four dissolves, in particular—the film's conclusion is ultimately predictable and, if only slightly, unsatisfying.

Arts in the City, January 2007