Suspended Time (2025)

Direction: Olivier Assayas
Country: France

Olivier Assayas is no ordinary director. Irma Vep (1996), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016) are unforgettable works that remain etched in my mind. Suspended Time, however—a personal pandemic-era product—never approaches those heights.

In this uneven docu-dramedy set during Covid, the French filmmaker revisits the confinement with his brother in their childhood home in the countryside of Essonne. Vincent Macaigne plays Paul Berger—Assayas’ on-screen “double”—an anxious, neurotic filmmaker who seeks occasional relief in therapy, while Micha Lescot—carrying a Howard Stern-like arrogance— plays his rock-critic brother Etienne. 

The brothers’ tensions are tempered by their partners, Morgane (Nine d’Urso) and Carol (Nora Hamzawi), and evenings bring a temporary peace—dinners and drinks outdoors soften the edges—only for irritations to resurface the next morning. These domestic rhythms are intercut with lyrical, autobiographical voiceovers from Assayas himself.

Covid did these things, with people suddenly needing to tell a lot about themselves. Caught in the web of the past, the film struggles to move beyond the trivial, offering little more than a handful of mildly awkward domestic moments. The “artsy” dialogues, drifting toward tedium, rob the film of momentum. Suspended Time quickly goes stale—a talkative, pretentious, and overly nostalgic trifle that leaves annoyance lingering longer than any genuine insight or emotional connection.

The Listener (2024)

Direction: Steve Buscemi
Country: USA

The first directorial effort from Steve Buscemi in 15 years, The Listener, centers on a helpline volunteer named Beth (Tessa Thompson, who also produced). Her soothing voice seeks to comfort people grappling with various issues in their lives such as loneliness, frustration, depression, boredom, rejection, guilt, and even mental illness. It’s a one-actor movie with a simple narrative that unfolds over the course of a single nightshift during the Covid pandemic, a time when the demand for telephone counseling services increased massively.

Beth experiences different feelings with each caller. Sometimes she gets interested in a certain topic, or she might feel a chilly sense of discomfort when her interlocutor becomes aggressive. Moved by the hope she puts in the next call, Beth is capable of relating deeply with a person to the point of opening up about her own life and traumas. Each segment offers a bit of a fractured American society, touching on issues like medical insurance, guns, corrupt systems, war trauma, and mental illness. This juxtaposes the tranquility of the home setting with the tension of the conversation. 

Buscemi’s focused direction maintains the same tonal palette throughout, but these segments are engaging enough to keep you invested. However, The Listener won't be a film we'll remember a year from now. This model of low-budget filmmaking is not a compulsive watch like The Guilty (2018), a pure thrilling experience, but is rather enveloped by a slightly tense melancholy that reveals more about this caring young woman. You'd need a flinty heart to ignore her valuable work here, and Thompson carries the film on her shoulders with candidness and conviction.