As with all Ozon’s work, Time to Leave resounds with grace notes. The wide-screen cinematography by Jeanne Lapoirie offsets (or maybe disguises) the movie’s narrow scope, and there’s something private—withholding—in Poupaud’s beauty that gives his misanthropy a touch of mystery: He might be more than just an emotional coward. Most affecting of all are the explicit sex scenes: one hungry, with the threat of violence; one probing, exploratory, transcendent. The way in this film that tortured people dramatize their rage and longing via sex reminds you how much is missing—a world of experience—in the American cinema.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Directed by Gore Verbinski. Buena Vista Pictures. PG-13.

Time to Leave
Directed by François Ozon. Strand releasing. Not Rated.

E-mail: filmcritic@newyorkmag.com.

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