Perth Voice Interactive

WHEN Fall is Coming starts out gently.

An elderly Michelle and her best friend Marie-Claude are picking mushrooms in the picturesque woods of their country village in Burgundy.

It’s slow and peaceful – the autumn colours taking centre stage.

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) is preparing a lunch for her rude and ungrateful daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), who is coming up from Paris to drop off her son for the school holidays.

Valérie wolfs down her mother’s quiche and sautéed mushrooms, but later that day she’s wheeled out to an ambulance with stomach pains and nausea.

The culprit – the mushrooms.

After getting her stomach pumped and recovering, Valérie leaves with her son and tells her mother she is a liability and will never see her grandson again.

It’s never really established if the poisoning was deliberate or not, and you’re left to make up your own mind.

At this point, you can’t help but think of the real life case of Erin Patterson, who is on trial for allegedly murdering three people with poisonous mushrooms in Victoria.

Heartbroken and lonely, Michelle sinks into a depression. 

She ends up giving Marie-Claude’s son Vincent (Pierre Lottin), who has just been released from jail, a job as a gardener at her house.

The pair form an unlikely and rather dysfunctional bond, and you’re never quite sure if Vincent is going to crack and do something horrible, or if he is fleecing Michelle for money. It creates a nice simmering tension.

Vincent hears about Michelle being cut off from her grandson and takes matters into his own hands.

This is where the film comes into its own – there’s several plot twists I never saw coming.

If you don’t like spoilers, stop reading now. 

After Vincent visits Valérie, she is found dead on the pavement outside her apartment.

Vincent tells his mum it was an accident – she fell off her balcony while reaching up for cigarettes in a plant pot.

It’s then revealed that Michelle and Marie-Claude used to work as high class prostitutes, and that’s why Valérie was so angry and bitter towards her mum.

It also gives context to why Vincent had a troubled youth and went down the wrong path.

It’s a fantastic twist and adds moral ambiguity and depth to the movie.

Are Michelle and Marie-Claude to blame for their screwed-up kids or did they do the best they could to put money on the table?

Adding to the tension, police are investigating whether Valérie’s death was suicide or murder.

Will Vincent end up back in jail?

It’s also hinted that Michelle may have early dementia and that’s why she picked the wrong mushrooms for lunch.

There are lots of maybes and what ifs, leaving the audience to make up their own mind.

There’s also a surreal twist with a dead Valérie popping up from time-to-time to talk with her mum.

Michelle is now bringing up her grandson – was that her goal all along?

The movie starts out as a quiet character study, but soon evolves into a sprawling drama with weighty themes and lots of moral dilemmas.

Like all the best films, life is rendered in shades of grey and is complex.

With the cooler weather arriving, When Fall is Coming is a nice autumnal watch, but it might put you off eating mushrooms for a while.

Showing as part of the Alliance Française French Film Festival, When Fall is Coming is at Luna on SX on March 31 and April 16, and at Luna Leederville on April 2 and April 5. For more details see lunapalace.com.au.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK