Tag: Mathieu Amalric

This week another film maker tackles a subject frequently explored in movies of the heart, perhaps best labeled the romance (but not a “rom-com”, though there’s a smidgen of humor).  It’s the old “lost love” plot, where the story’s focus character (often nearing those “twilight” years) remembers his first real infatuation and heartbreak, usually eliciting pangs of remorse or regret. Popular author Nicholas Sparks has made this a standard theme in film adaptations of his work from THE NOTEBOOK to THE BEST OF ME. Now this new release hails from across the pond, France to be precise. Unlike those previously mentioned big screen “soaps” it is a more somber meditation when the film’s protagonist’s thoughts recall MY GOLDEN DAYS.
Those sun drenched days belong to a scholar working for France’s department of ministry, Paul Dedalus (Mathieu Amalric). We encounter him as he prepares to leave Tajikistan for Paris. While he packs he remembers his pre-teen years, when he (Antoine Bui) and his younger siblings, sister Delphine and eccentric brother Ivan, tried to survive their crumbling family unit. Their mentally ill mother suddenly died leaving their father lonely and inconsolable. Young Paul could only find affection from his nurturing aunt and her special lady friend, a Russian refugee. When the adult Paul arrives in Paris he is whisked away by airport security because of an irregularity with his passport. Seems a man in Australia has the exact same name and birthdate. Paul finally tells his interrogator the truth. While in high school, he and his best pal Marc are recruited by former USSR citizens. They ask them to help out some friends in the old country when the boys go there on a class field trip. And Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) should give his passport to them, in order for a teenager to flee to Israel.
This tale of clumsy teenage espionage ends with another memory, that of his first real love a few years later. After his inaugural year of college studies, Paul returns home to Delphine (Lilly Taieb) and Ivan (Raphael Cohen). Outside their high school, Paul is gobsmacked by the sight of the campus beauty, Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). Their love affair endures many travails over the next few years as Paul’s studies separate them. Every spare minute apart is spent writing long, passionate letters. When the adult Paul is contacted by an old friend about Esther, he digs through the fading correspondence, reliving those days of emotional upheaval and pure bliss.

Amalric as the adult, modern-day Paul anchors the film with a strong confident performance and fully captures this educated, world-weary intellectual. He keeps his emotions in check until those old letters open up the floodgates that cause much collateral damage in a reunion that quickly becomes uncomfortable and nearly violent. Dolmaire as the teen/young adult Paul is full of bravado and exuberance, constantly leading with his heart rather than his head. He shows this in his near-unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which is almost sidelined by his pursuit of the elusive Esther. Roy-Lecollinet portrays her as a bombshell who almost seems bored by the way she can make any boy her puppet. She lets us see how Paul opens her up and engages her mind, challenging her as no one has before. When he departs, we see how she is swallowed up by an all-encompassing sadness, one that causes her to strike back at him in meaningless flings. As the teen Ivan, Cohen remains an enigmatic mystery, a living ghost. But it’s Taieb that grabs our hearts with an unflinching confession to her father, as she bemoans her own worth.
The talented cast truly inhabit their roles even when the script veers into odd directions with obtuse motivations. Director Arnaud Desplechin (who co-wrote the screenplay with Julie Peyr) sets the film on several paths than often shift and detour with little logic. The whole airport security situation just dissolves away to the college fling. The father flits in and out like a spectre, passing through without making any connections. We only see the mother in a strange overwrought confrontation on a stairwell. And other scenes come off as ill-conceived. A subplot involving Ivan’s plan to rob a bank floats aside. And in the film’s most bizarre sequence, one that’s sure to have many viewers dumbfounded, Paul is so distraught over the loss of an African mentor that he covers his face in dark make-up ala THE JAZZ SINGER!  Desplechin tries to make the love letters more cinematic by having Paul and Esther recite them, straight into the camera while in different locales, but the story grinds to a halt with these set pieces. These become tiresome along with the hot and cold nature of their affair. He’s mad now, while she wants him, then rejects him, then re-united, …and repeat again and again. All while chain-smoking, which is truly nauseating (I know it’s French, but sheesh!). There are some terrific performances but there’s mired in a tedious plot that really tarnishes the shiny luster of MY GOLDEN DAYS.
2.5 Out of 5
MY GOLDEN DAYS opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre