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Films

L’Avenir (Things to Come)

Terri Murray takes in a subtle critique of academic philosophy’s anemic inertia.

Things To Come – L’Avenir (2016) – is French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s tale of Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabel Huppert), a middle-aged philosophy teacher haunted by a vague malaise while seemingly having no insight into its cause. Things To Come manages to deliver a searing indictment of the state of Western philosophy in an exceptionally understated film. This fine balance earned Hansen-Løve the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in 2016.

No Commitments

At the beginning of the film Professor Chazeaux walks through a picket line of demonstrating students to get into the Paris university where she works. When several students interrogate her apparent lack of concern, she retorts, “I’m not here to talk politics, but to teach.

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