Time Has Come

Guiraudie’s habit of transposing familiar kinds of political struggles and power conflicts onto fantastical settings reached its apex with this bitter, wildly imaginative sci-fi fable. In the fictional land of Obitania, under the shadow of the Purple Mountain, a bandit, a warrior, and a conflicted mercenary get caught up in the struggle between a wealthy shepherd and his oppressed underlings. The film moves with a hazy, dreamlike flow, but settles primarily on mercenary Fogo Lompola—who finds himself torn between political allegiances and distracted by his unreciprocated feelings for an older man. Time Has Come is at once a full-throttle excursion into fantasy, a harsh critique of fanciful escapism as a way of ignoring political injustice, and a statement of faith in the power of illusion to shed light on reality: “I dreamt of an impossible machine,” says one character, “which became possible as soon as I dreamt it.”