Hi, Honey. How Was Your Day?

“Time Out” is not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it’s a provocative, even an unnerving one as well. It’s the story of a daring impostor named Vincent, a world-class dissembler who goes to extraordinary lengths to carry out an increasingly elaborate deception. What does Vincent take all these pains to pretend to be? A man with a job.

At one time, of course, Vincent had the kind of well-paying, white-collar employment that enabled him to buy a home and support a wife and three children. But after he’s let go, his reluctance to tell his family what has happened leads him down an increasingly risky and surreal path that starts to double back on itself in unforeseen ways.

Though its trajectory is different, “Time Out” (L’Emploi du Temps) was partly suggested by the real-life story of Jean-Claude Romand, who resorted to violence when his 18 years of pretending to work for the World Health Organization were uncovered. French director Laurent Cantet, who co-wrote “Time Out” with Robin Campillo, was understandably attracted to this situation. Almost alone among contemporary filmmakers, his pictures, like his previous “Human Resources,” are about the centrality of work, about work as the definer of who we are. “When we are out of work,” he’s said in interviews, “we are nothing.”

Cantet was especially fortunate in persuading Aurelien Recoing, a top French stage actor who’s never before had a leading role on film, to star as Vincent. It’s a quite demanding part because this soft, harmless-looking individual is in many ways a cipher, someone who’s largely unknowable to his co-workers, his wife, maybe even to himself.

Pudgy, balding, his face a pliant mask, Vincent is the man who always blends in, the man who’s interchangeable with the rest of the herd. Which is what makes his deceptions so difficult to detect and so discomforting to observe as they unfold.

“Time Out” begins with Vincent, asleep in his car in a school parking lot, roused by a cell phone call from his wife Muriel (Karin Viard). Before he’s even fully awake, he’s telling the first of the endless lies that mark his day, talking about clients that don’t exist, meetings that will never take place, the grueling nature of a travel-intensive job that is no longer there. Once he’s off the phone he’s freed, at least initially, from the working world’s cares.

When Vincent returns home, the deceptions get increasingly difficult to manage as his wife and his parents pressure him for details about his work. When his lies threaten to trip him up, he escapes by telling bigger ones, taking greater and greater risks as he tip-toes on the verge of being unmasked.

It is one of the pleasures of Recoing’s performance that it enables us to sense how initially exhilarating all this is for Vincent. He’s fascinated, even energized by his gift for deception, turned on by how willing others are to accept his claims. And when he concocts a job for himself as a Geneva-based consultant for the U.N., he clearly gets satisfaction out of finally doing meaningful work even though that work is mostly in his head.

It’s not entirely in his head because, in one of the film’s killing paradoxes, maintaining the illusion of having a job becomes a time-consuming occupation in and of itself, though one that Vincent finds much more to his liking.

So we see Vincent sneaking into his make-believe office in a Geneva building, clandestinely reading documents and preparing to talk knowledgably back home about his new position. Now that he has no source of income, he’s forced to involve old school friends, even his parents, in increasingly complex and frantic scams that prey on gullibility and trust and involve Vincent in the kinds of dilemmas he never imagined.

Though you wouldn’t necessarily guess it, except for Recoing as Vincent and Cesar-winning actress Viard as his wife, the performers in “Time Out” are not professionals. Director Cantet enabled the cast to have input into their dialogue, a process that adds to the film’s uncanny naturalness. “Time Out’s” reality level is one of the many things making this look at living a lie truly haunting. Does Vincent lose track of who he is through this complex deception, or get tantalizingly closer to his actual core being? It’s not as easy a question to answer as you might think.

No MPAA rating. Times guidelines: adult themes.

‘Time Out’

Aurelien Recoing...Vincent

Karin Viard...Muriel

Serge Livrozet...Jean-Michel

Jean-Pierre Mangeot...Father

Monique Mangeot...Mother

Released by ThinkFilm. Director Laurent Cantet. Producer Caroline Benjo. Executive producer Barbara Letellier. Screenplay Robin Campillo and Laurent Cantet. Cinematographer Pierre Milon. Editor Robin Campillo. Music Jocelyn Pook. Art director Romain Denis. Running time: 2 hours, 12 minutes

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