Things to Come

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 2.5

... with those "things" being disillusionment and death (time's a bitch). Philosophy teacher Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) has to deal with her adulterous husband, her sick mother and newly-radicalized students (who keep echoing the events of 1968) and keeps wondering what she's going to do with the rest of her own life. The overall feeling is one of resignation: once a fiery young radical herself (and briefly a Communist!), Nathalie drifts through her own mess both somber and paralyzed, hanging around younger, politically-active types but never managing to muster the same spirit they have, too preoccupied with smaller-scale life issues to go out and protest (revolutions are for the kids, not necessarily the adults). Huppert is solid in the lead (as always), but like her character, the movie's a little too numb to elicit much of a lasting response.