Vincent appears to happily spend his weeks on the road, busy with business trips and meetings. He shares vague details with his loving wife, Muriel, and their three children... But Vincent's professional life is actually fictional. He hasn't been able to tell his family and friends about losing his long-time consulting job weeks ago. Vincent feels pressured into inventing a prestigious new job for himself in Geneva. Telling lies becomes a full-time occupation. To maintain his lost income, he desperately betrays even his friends that trust him in shady investment deals. All Vincent ever wanted was to call time out from a suffocating professional life, yet somehow allow his family's life to continue as before. Now the ever-growing tension of Vincent's world is quickly closing in... The expectations of a provincial community where your job is who you are. A former colleague's insistent concern. A father's overbearing desire for the best for his son.

The character of Vincent is a man who seems somewhat invisible, who appears to blend perfectly into the Back¬ground. He' s a chameleon with the frightening ability to lead a double life... How to run away from everything one has constructed ? From this point of view, TIME OUT (L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS) tells the story of a fantastic escape effort. Vincent's escape, however, is very ambiguous, since he actually doesn't wish to change his life at all. He only wants to free himself from all financial and social traps.

So he opts for an unbearable fabricated position, somewhere between the com-forts of rniddle-class social recognition (family, work, money) and a more troubling world of easy money and shady business. Paradoxically, making up an ideal life will end up being a fall-tune fob for him. From writing through editing, the objective was to create the double subjectivity which makes Vincent the sincerest of liars, an actor of his own life.

TIME OUT (L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS) is the second feature film by writer-director Laurent Cantet. Cantet's debut was the successful 1999 film HUMAN RESOURCES (RESSOURCES HUMAINES), which received the Cesar (French Academy Award) for Best First Film and Best New Actor for Jalil Lespert. Amongst its numerous prizes, HUMAN RESOURCES won the New Directors Prize at the San Sebastian Festival and the Fassbinder/Discovery Prize at the European Film Awards.

Cantet had previously directed the 1997 made-for-television LES SANGUINAIRES for the "2000 Seen By" series. A 1996 graduate of Paris' IDHEC film school, Cantet made two acclaimed shorts, 1995's JEUX DE PLAGE and 1993's TOUS A LA MANIF, a Prix Jean Vigo-winner.