In this brooding and chilling film, director Laurent Cantet (Human Resources) has come up with an excellent parable for the new Western economy, with its mobile workers, bland interpersonal style, ideology of personal growth, and addiction to jargon. Rather than break it to his family that he's been laid off, businessman Vincent (Aurélien Recoing) pretends to have started a new job that requires him to spend most of the week away from home. He passes the time driving, haunting the lobbies of hotels and office parks, communicating with his wife by cell phone, and spinning a web of detailed lies about his activities.

The film's black mood owes much to Cantet's psychological insight. The more obsessively Vincent strives to keep up the appearance of being okay, the more his existence becomes vacuous and unreal. With his family and friends, he masters the art of avoiding situations where he would have to talk too clearly about himself; alone on the fringes of the corporate universe, he seems in danger of disappearing altogether. With sleek precision, Time Out describes a scary emptiness at the heart of the familiar. At the Cable Car.