Interview. François Ozon.

Time to Leave is "notable as one of the rare [François] Ozon films that offers up a protagonist we could possibly see as a projection of Ozon himself," notes Hannah Eaves, introducing her interview at the main site.

"At times, Ozon has dabbled in the role of provocateur, but he plays Time to Leave disappointingly straight," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "Melodrama has attracted gay directors as different as Ozon, Todd Haynes, and Stanley Kwan. Ozon is too knowing not to be aware of its pitfalls - or the pointlessness of camping it up or parodying it - but he still falls prey to it."

"Curiously, the melodramatic elements of Time to Leave - the moments of emotional display, the surges of music — help to insulate the film from sentimentality," writes AO Scott in the New York Times, adding that the film, "in the end, explains very little, choosing instead to emphasize the essential paradox that an individual's life is never complete and always over too soon."

Updated through 7/20.

Earlier: Paul Fileri in Film Comment.

Updates: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "It's a magnificent miniature, a supremely tender work that's full of emotion and even sentimentality, but that never stoops to fulfill the audience's wishes or tries to make Romain ([Melvil] Poupaud) any more likable on death's door than he was before."

Stuart Klawans in the Nation: "In the past, I have tended to resist Ozon's immaculate, manipulative style and artifice-laden stories. (His biggest hit, The Swimming Pool, struck me as being a Russ Meyer movie with brie.) But in Time to Leave, Ozon has poked through the Saran Wrap of his own cleverness to touch on feelings that are simple and sincere."

At the IFC Blog, Alison Willmore calls Time to Leave "the most arty of guilty pleasures, a decadent and moving melodrama in which someone folds up the loose ends of his life like a blanket to be tucked away - the feel-good death film of the summer."

Update, 7/17: For the Lumière Reader, David Levinson reviews 5x2, in which "Ozon confronts the morbid persistence of human hearts (and human loins) in the face of certain failure."

Update, 7/18: "Though the French director may not sidestep cliches endemic to the subject matter, his desire to provoke a quieter meditation upon mortality - rather than simply court tears - makes this an interestingly flawed project." Michael Koresky opens the Reverse Shot round at indieWIRE.

Updates, 7/20: "Fatality has, somehow, enriched Ozon's art." Armond White in the New York Press.

"For anyone who has remained on the fence about Ozon's weird progression from French enfant terrible to purveyor of mild middlebrow weepies, Time to Leave might force you to lose your balance a little," writes Robbie Freeling at the Reverseblog.

Posted by dwhudson at July 14, 2006 3:50 AM