‘Time’ resonates deeply, yet slips through cracks

In theaters

TIME OUT, directed by Laurent Cantet, written by Cantet and Robin Campillo, 132 minutes, rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Without a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to give it a kick or a major American star to give it a lift, Laurent Cantet’s “Time Out” did just what was expected of it over the weekend – it slipped through the cracks and essentially went unseen in spite of being superior to the three major Hollywood releases: “The Bourne Identity,” “Scooby-Doo” and “Windtalkers.”

The film has those qualities that tend to kill a movie, especially one released during the summer months: subtitles and substance. Its focus is on real life, which has gotten a bad rap lately, and on real people, who have almost gone missing from today’s box office-obsessed Hollywood. Still, I can tell you this: It resonates more deeply than any explosion and is more filling than any Scooby snack.

The film, from a script by Cantet and Robin Campillo, follows Vincent (Aur?lien Recoing), a mid-40s businessman so humiliated and ashamed to have been fired from his job that he invents a new life for himself, vaguely informing his wife, Muriel (Karin Viard), their three children, his parents and their friends that he’s found new work just over the French border in Switzerland.

No such job exists, but Vincent, now caught in the web of his own lies, starts spending extended periods away from home. Driving aimlessly through the French countryside and often sleeping in his car, he keeps in touch with his wife via his cell phone, sharing with her the highs and lows of a life that doesn’t exist while trying to shield her from the disappointment that his life has become.

When it occurs to him that he can’t maintain this fa?ade without an influx of cash, he starts selling shares of a bogus investment fund to friends and acquaintances, easily pocketing hundreds of thousands of francs in the process.

What’s remarkable about “Time Out” is how convincingly Vincent is portrayed as a victim in spite of his victimization of others. He’s no sociopath, but a man whose increasing sense of guilt literally shimmers in his eyes and boils beneath the cool mask he presents to the world. His identity is defined by his work, but since he feels he’s nothing without his work, he fabricates a powerful position for himself and plays the role he believes men are supposed to play.

When he realizes that that role might be the real illusion, the nightmare of his duplicity strikes and his life jackknifes to a conclusion few will see coming.

Grade: A-

On video and DVD

THE MAJESTIC, directed by Frank Darabont, written by Michael Sloane, 152 minutes, rated PG.

Frank Darabont’s “The Majestic” stars Jim Carrey in full apple-pie mode as Peter Appleton, a 1950s screenwriter blacklisted by the studios during the McCarthy era’s Red Scare for allegedly being a communist.

Cast out of his job and tossed aside like yesterday’s bad script, Peter plunges into a depression. Seeking comfort from his toy monkey – yes, his toy monkey, whose stuffed presence actually eclipses Carrey’s stuffed performance – Peter gets drunk at a local watering hole, takes off for a spirited car ride out of town and eventually careens over a bridge, where he plummets into a river and is struck with amnesia.

Now literally washed up in Lawrence, Calif., a small town so absurdly warm and fuzzy that it makes Mayberry look as if it spawned the devil, Peter is mistaken for Luke Trimble, one of 62 young men Lawrence lost 10 years before in World War II.

What ensues is absolute hokum, a long-winded bore that tries so hard to exhume the spirit of Frank Capra, it dies from trying. That all of it builds to Peter’s defending himself against the House Un-American Activities Committee in a forced courtroom scene may be the element Darabont thought he needed to swell our hearts, but since his handling of the event is as bogus as Carrey’s performance, audiences might wish everyone involved had just taken the Fifth and kept their mouths shut.

It’s a shame, really. Darabont scored big with “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” but in the absence of Stephen King’s prisons, he finds himself locked in a bad movie with no one to bail him out. “The Majestic” is a nostalgic sugar pill that wants to get lodged in your throat, but it dissolves so quickly, it should be dismissed as an irritant.

Grade: D-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.