François Ozon has to be the French cinema’s premier poker player.

With his genre-bending/expectations-upending dramas (“Everything Went Fine”), dramedies (“In the House”), feminist comedies (“Potiche”) and musical drama mysteries (“8 Women”), you’d hate to be seated at the same table as Ozon for a card game. You just know the sneaky Frenchman’s got aces in the hole, even if he doesn’t.

“When Fall is Coming” is a darkly comic tale of secrets within secrets, a mystery that doesn’t “solve” its mystery at all, but winks at what it might all be about in a finale that playfully doesn’t give us the answers.

We guess this and we surmise that, and damned if we aren’t wrong again and again. Better fold that hand, sit back and see if anybody else calls his bluff so that he has to show us what ‘

Hélène Vincent, a screen veteran who made her debut in the ’60s, is Michelle, a lively little old lady spending her days in a cozy farmhouse on the outskirts of a small town in Burgundy. She tends her garden, dutifully attends church every Sunday, takes long walks with her longtime bestie Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko of “French Twist”), plucking mushrooms when they’re in season.

But what Michelle really looks forward to is visits from her not-quite-estranged daughter Valerie (Ozon favorite Ludivine Sagnier, most recently seen in “Napoleon”) and her tween grandson Lucas (Garlan Erlos). When they roll in for a fall school break, we wonder why.

The kid adores his doting grandmother. But his mom does not. She is a distracted, snappish finger pointer who looks away from her phone long enough to blurt out a fresh blast of tactlessness.

“If you give me the house now, I’ll pay less tax when you die,” is just as jarring in French (with subtitles) as it is in English.

Mom is taken aback, perplexed. “But I already gave you the (Paris) apartment!”

“So?” the 40something brat spits back.

A meal that goes wrong and puts Valerie in the hospital has us wondering if she “knew” the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms. Valerie hints at Mom’s background when she grabs the kid and storms out.

“You’re TOXIC!”

Michelle is distraught. But old friend and confidante Marie-Claude has her own problems. Michelle drives her to the local prison on visitation days. And now Marie-Claude’s convict son Vincent (Pierre Lottin who was in “The Night of the 12th”) is getting out.

Michelle gives him work, and as he overhears her pleas and complaints about her now-estranged daughter and the loss of visits from her grandson, Vincent takes it on himself to visit his old classmate in Paris to get her to “go easy” on her mother.

What we get from that encounter is more clues about Michelle and Marie-Claude’s past, and somebody ends up dead. But we’re not exactly sure why and by whose hand.

The movie is about making no effort to allay suspicions that those who benefited from this turn of events didn’t conspire to cause them.

The foreboding music underscoring seeming innocuous scenes suggests Ozon’s having one over on us. A couple of laugh-out-loud action, reactions and under-reactions might confirm this. Or not.

The performances are defined by the evasive quality Ozon insists upon. Is this character capable of killing? Has she/he killed in the past? Is this or that one gay, has she or he had an epiphany that they’ll share and clear everything up?

What Ozon flirts with is the superior adaptability and endurance of those who can let the past be the past, and the costs of not getting over to those who won’t.

For all his elusiveness, Ozon can’t wholly hide the fact that he’s written himself into a corner and that the movie has nowhere to go in the third act. With ghosts and repercussions and new cop questions involved, “nowhere” means “nowhere new and surprising” in this case.

I’d still steer clear of any card table with this filmmaker, whose next trick is an adaptation of Camus’ elusive “The Stranger,” sitting at it.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, smoking

Cast: Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko,
Pierre Lottin, Garlan Erlos, and Ludivine Sagnier

Credits: Directed by François Ozon, scripted by
François Ozon and Philippe Piazzo. A Music Box release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:44