Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert) is a Parisian high-school philosophy teacher in her sixties. She seems to have an ideal family life. Her husband Heinz (André Marcon) also teaches philosophy at the same school and they have a content family life at home with their two young adult children. As the film progresses, life situations becomes less ideal for Nathalie including the mental and physical decline of her high-maintenance mother (Edith Scob).The film's beginning was fascinating. It included school protests against the current state of France; it also included a disagreement Nathalie has with a pair of marketing experts on how her book, written years ago, should be packaged to sell better. These scenes seemed to promise a critique of our modern times. While those themes more or less dissipated after the beginning, "Things to Come" remains an insightful film at other levels.Yet again, Huppert raises the film to a higher level with her talent and presence portraying a role with which many in her life situation could identify. She seems strangely cool when given bad news but her humanity (and tears) show more clearly when she is alone.This coolness is especially apparent in her final scene with Marcon. It is amazing how both seem to be having a casual conversation but there is so much bite and sadness in the subtext beneath their words. This scene is quite remarkable.Director/writer Mia Hansen-Love presents her fine story free of any flash. Sometimes, this subtlety is welcome but this movie might have used just a little more flash to heighten a few scenes. But with such a fine lead player, Hansen-Love might have found this unnecessary. The bonus is the various philosophical discussions (including talk of the events around the 1968 uprising) which Nathalie has with her husband, her classes at school, and a former prized student who now lives in an anarchist commune in the countryside.

It has been a long time since I last saw a more pretentious, artificial, unnatural film as this one. The acting is artificial, the plot is non- existent, the theme unnatural. The same unnatural French issues, never saying anything, cryptic and lacking any kind of depth. Absolutely awful and boring, boring in the deepest sense - why would anyone make a film about nothing to say nothing, to transmit nothing, to show nothing?!

The efficiency of "L'avenir" has in Isabelle Huppert your vital point. If her Nathalie had been given to an actress with less recourse, and she did not have the passion and delivery that Huppert has, we would have a movie out of tune. Fortunately we have Huppert,and here her talents is always added. First to a excellent screenplay, that creates believable and interesting situations, developing the film with many doses of realism, and very calmly and interested. The supporters are very good too, and the direction is excellent, flowing in an incredible way. Is subtle, investigative, never exhibitionist, and is placed as the eyes of the audience, always observing the actions and reactions that fall about your lead. The results is a picture interested and interesting, intellectualized but not snobby, about a ordinary person and ordinary situations (although shocking), and never (thank you!) loses the focus of dazzle that is Isabelle Huppert.

The pace of the film is very slow and at times boring. The story is slow to appear and the ending is unsatisfactory. There were some discussions of philosophy which I found murky. The acting and casting seems fine. The plot is that of a middle aged woman who's husband leaves her for a younger woman. She seems not to suspect anything beforehand and we see some of her emotional response. The depiction of the lifestyle of an intellectual family in Paris is interesting but the lives of the two children are poorly developed which, I imagine, is purposeful. The director seems to want a laser focus on the main character, Isabel Hubert. She is a fine actress and plays the part with style.Overall, it is just not enough of a plot, not enough action, to keep the interest of the viewer. I wish we could see more french films here in the USA since I'm a fan of french cinema, in general.