Things to Come

Things to Come (L'Avenir, 2016) is a French-German drama you can watch online on iFILM. Mia Hansen-Løve wrote and directed; Isabelle Huppert plays Nathalie, a Paris philosophy teacher whose life quietly falls apart — and then quietly reassembles. The film brought Hansen-Løve the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Nathalie's world looks stable until it isn't. Her husband of decades leaves for someone else. Her demanding, fragile mother takes up more and more space. The publisher drops her textbooks. Her former students have scattered. What's left is an unexpected freedom she spent years theorizing about in the classroom — and no map for actually living it.

Huppert carries the film on a kind of controlled stillness: Nathalie doesn't collapse or rage, she recalibrates. That restraint is what gives the movie its weight. Stream Things to Come online on iFILM.