An avant-garde documentary on the conditions of revolution--shot in France in June 1980 and in Egypt in May 1981. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes: "For once, the customary relationship for Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet between a physical setting and a written text becomes inverted. In Too Early, Too Late, the landscapes are the true 'body of the text,' while the off-screen texts become the 'settings' for places (mainly rural) in France and Egypt--each one captured so that afterwards we feel that we've been there. A bit like jazz, where the passing human and animal traffic and elements such as wind function like improvisations on a fixed, given terrain. Ethical and beautiful as a documentary for the same reasons, it's a film of endless activity supported by a sustained distance, a complete absence of characters and a continual human presence; it is perhaps the most populated of all Straub-Huillet's films."