‘Suspended Time’ Review: Olivier Assayas’ Sunny Indulgence Returns Us to the Early Days of Lockdown
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic If any part of you has been curious as to how French filmmaker Olivier Assayas spent the early days of the global pandemic, along comes “Suspended Time” to answer your question, with very much the answer you might expect: pretty comfortably, thanks for asking.
Alternating a thinly fictionalised portrait of the artist isolating at his family’s country home with fully autobiographical narration by the director himself, this mildly amusing but vastly indulgent bagatelle feels a tardy entry in the first wave of lockdown cinema — too late to feel fresh, but still too soon to have accumulated much meaningful perspective on an experience we all remember too well.
Assayas devotees will take some pleasure in its formal fillips and self-references. Others need not apply. At its most interesting — and quietly gossipy, if you are so minded — “Suspended Time” could be read as a reply work of sorts to “Bergman Island,” a more ornate but similarly self-reflexive 2021 film by Assayas’ ex-partner Mia Hansen-Løve.
Written in the wake of their separation, Hansen-Løve’s film mused somewhat tartly on the challenges of preserving one’s sense of self while maintaining a relationship with an older artist who regards you as a subject as well as a lover.
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