TIME OUT (L’Emploi du Temps) []

FRENCH director Laurence Cantet revisits the contemporary workplace with “Time Out,” a less successful follow-up to “Human Resources,” his wrenching debut about a manager forced to lay off his own father.

“Time Out,” inspired by a real-life case, follows Vincent (Aurelien Recoing, a fine stage actor who resembles the American comedian Larry Miller), a newly unemployed consultant, who tells his unsuspecting wife (Karin Viard) he has landed a nonexistent job with the United Nations in Geneva.

To support this fiction and his regular commute to and from France, Vincent develops an increasingly convoluted series of scams to bilk his father and friends out of money.

The provocative suggestion is that what Vincent is doing isn’t much different from his old job, and probably a lot more productive.

“Time Out,” which looks great but moves like molasses, is more interesting than truly involving.

Running time: 132 minutes. In French, with subtitles. Not rated (violence, profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza, the Angelika.