Olivier Assayas Plans Sequels to Something in the Air and Suspended Time

Unless you’re considering his perfect parodies in Clouds of Sils Maria and 2022’s Irma Vep, the words “Olivier Assayas” and “franchise cinema” don’t quite gel. If he were to make a late-in-life pivot, however, one could hardly ask for better means than his autobiographical films. Speaking to our own Nick Newman for the Metrograph Journal, Assayas revealed he’s “almost” done with a screenplay for Something in the Air 2.

This—you guessed it—would succeed his 2012 feature, which chronicled a young man’s experience in and disillusionment with political activities around May ’68, climaxing (spoilers for a 14-year-old movie) with the implication that this would-be revolutionary would pivot into cinema. (Much of this is detailed at greater length in the director’s memoir A Post-May Adolescence.) In the interview, Assayas said a Something in the Air sequel would concern “The Punk Rock Years,” i.e. the 1970s, which (apologies to Lola Créton) is a tad too close to the original’s chronology to bring back actors the better part of 20 years later.

This era’s clearly marked him; he discussed it with us all the way back in 2012, saying:

It would be really lying to pretend I can look back on the ‘70s with empathetic nostalgia, because living through the ‘70s was tough—in terms of the dogmatic politics of the time, and the way they were completely cut off from the reality of society of those years. It was suffocating and, you know, I’ve written it and I’ve said it a million times, but punk rock in the late ‘70s came as relief. It was just, like, the end of something that had become unbearable. It was liberation in a major way, so… I do not dismiss the 1970s. The ‘70s were fascinating. They were crazy, and people were just experimenting with their own lives. There was a great beauty to that.

All of which suggests fertile ground, but there’s no guarantee Something in the Air 2 would come soon: Assayas noted, “If I do make it, it won’t be my next film, it will be the one after.” And while that would be a recollection of time long gone, he’s also considering a follow-up to the very-recent Suspended Time, itself a chronicle of 2020. Perhaps Vincent Macaigne could reprise that film’s Assayas stand-in and direct another stand-in (once again played by Macaigne?) in a recreation of the already-meta Irma Vep series, and then the universe will begin folding in on itself.

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