Suspended Time: the COVID-19 lockdown was certainly a crucial event in our time; its extent and duration were unique, and those months contained a wide mix of feelings. Olivier Assayas’s gentle and quiet autobiographical account of his experiences captures the mood of those times very efficiently, no matter how privileged they may have been. The director’s alter ego and his brother (a music journalist), with their respective girlfriends, spend the lockdown in a country house that belonged to their parents. The film is far from plot-heavy, but the extensive conversations between them are generally interesting. As in most dialogue-heavy films, listening is very important, and a good deal of the acting comes from that; the cast is very solid. Vincent Macaigne plays the protagonist, and he is as good as usual with his neurotic character, although with a lighter, less comical undertone. Micha Lescot plays his cool-looking brother, Nine d’Urso and Nora Hamzawi play the girlfriends well enough but without much to do. Cinematographer Eric Gautier captures the mostly empty spaces with a soft light, making them seem dreamy, not an inappropriate choice.