L'Avenir

2016, France, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (aka Things to Come)

Another fine, and attractive, recent French film, this time from Mia Hansen-Løve, and on the strength of this she's a very mature and assured filmmaker from the perch of her mid-30s, working with Isabelle Huppert in reliably strong form. Huppert plays a middle-aged professor dealing with a variety of familial upheavals, and Hansen-Løve astutely avoids the various pitfalls (though she does also set the viewer up to some degree); as with La Belle saison, the political backdrop is strong and there's an interesting, latter-day, riff on the city/country interplay that feels very much of the recent moment while also nodding to the 1960s/1970s back-to-the-land movement. The final shot is quite wonderful.