听 
French director Laurent Cantet first turned heads with "Ressources Humaines", a realistic study of family dynamics set against a backdrop of industrial unrest. Now he delivers on that promise with "Time Out", which connects one man's breakdown to a wider landscape of economic downturn and colourless conformity.
Reminiscent of Michael Douglas's D-Fens character in "Falling Down", Vincent (Recoing) is a white collar worker who appears to spend his working days on the road on business trips. In fact he has been made redundant, and the pressure to conceal this from his wife Muriel (Viard), children and in-laws drives him to immoral, desperate and ultimately criminal behaviour.
Cantet subtly reveals the humiliating minutiae of Vincent's double life - sleeping in hotel car parks, killing time in lobbies, calling home with ever more ludicrous stories without once passing judgment on his actions. Clearly Vincent is deluding himself as much as he is deceiving others. But what makes his story so affecting is the absurd lengths he goes to maintaining this charade, even after his lies have been rumbled by everyone around him.
Though Cantet's clinical direction and the unsettling Jocelyn Pook score make "Time Out" a rather alienating experience, the lanky Recoing brings a wealth of humanity and pathos to his tragically mediocre hero.
There's also a memorably sleazy performance from Serge Livrozet as a jailbird turned hotel detective with a sideline in counterfeit goods - the bitter flipside to Vincent's fading dreams of bourgeois respectability.
In French with English subtitles.
