20/05/2003 - Despite a galaxy of European stars in this ensemble film, the Austrian director underwhelms the Croisette

Disappointment for Austrian director, Michael Haneke and Isabelle Huppert, the star of his latest film, Le Temps du Loup when journalists greeted today's out of competition screening with catcalls.
Michael Haneke put his traditional love of shocking people to one side and decided to go down a well-trodden road: human beings surviving a major catastrophe. Fear, violence, thirst, hunger, despair and a return to old beliefs in an ever-darkening and ominous landscape: the classic ingredients of a return to the savage state. The main characters are a woman (Huppert) and her two children who join the population on the move to the relative safety of the South.
After a strong start where darkness literally swallows the actors up, the film begins to lose direction when the fleeing masses gather in a camp. Haneke’s exceptional cast that includes Patrice Chéreau, Béatrice Dalles and Olivier Gourmet is by-and-large underused. That was Haneke’s precise intent because he wanted to tell a story that “begins with a family unit before it is absorbed into a larger community, whilst staying as close as possible to a fragmented reality, without either exaggerating or explaining too much.”
Co-produced by Germany and Austria (Les Films du Losange - Bavaria Film and Wega Film) Le temps du loup was deprived of its chance to compete because of Patrice Chéreau’s also being this year’s president of the jury. Despite its Euros8.8m budget and the excellent quality of the visual effects, the film failed to win critics over. A disaster for Michael Haneke: the six films he presented at past editions of Cannes always created waves on the Croisette and grabbed media attention.

(Translated from French)