Meine goldenen Tage

Paul Dedalus, an anthropologist returning from Tajikistan to Paris, remembers his mother (a short, intense scene), his high school "travel abroad" trip to Minsk, USSR (an odd destination for a school trip, but very exciting), and then alas, his interminable teen romance with Esther. Unfortunately the boring third segment is very long and Esther was not a character that I "cared about."

In this film Esther and Paul write letters to each other. They often speak their mind of others, and always profess their feelings for each other. Here are my two favorite correspondences.

"I can offer you only my lightness. I admire your every smile, your every rebuff. I realize my offer is flimsy. You make me laugh. Furious, unpleasant, exquisite: you always make me laugh. I love you only with lightness, yet I'm so heavy. Gloomy, as you all said at the party. You were right. You were right. I don't want you to wait. Don't count on me. My life is too austere for that. Paul"

"Hey Paul. Don't worry. Your remorse gets in your way. I'm simpler. Simply, I'm happy when I see you."

Earlier in the movie:

"Esther, you exist so much. Like a mountain. My existence, the world around me, seems aquiver. So I'm reassured. I don't care whether you want me. Your existence proves I'm not stuck in a dream. In you, at your feet, I place my faith."

This movie was a bit of a chameleon for me. Initially I found this story of Paul Dedalus's recollections of his youth disappointing. The story of Paul's broken family life was short and cryptic. The story of intrigue in Russia was interesting and begins to tell us something about Paul. The main focus, the recollection of his relationship with Esther, did not draw me in. Yes they were beautiful, but almost too much so, and their interactions did not seem authentic.

My thoughts evolved on further consideration. Paul is recalling the peak experiences from his youth, but how accurate are his memories? Were he and Esther really that beautiful? As another reviewer pointed out, his appearance at that age seems inconsistent with his younger and older selves - an accident of casting? Was he madly in love with her? His actions and decisions suggest otherwise. Did he fail to appreciate the importance of this relationship because of his youth and inexperience? Maybe, but consider the start of the movie.

"My Golden Days" (2015 release from France; 123 min.; original title "Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse" or "Three Memories from My Childhood") brings (further) stories from Paul Dedalus. As the movie opens, we see Paul and his Russian (?) girlfriend lament the fact that Paul is returning to France after 8 years away. It makes him think back to his childhood, and we flash back to Paul as an 11 yr. old boy, fighting with his (mentally deranged) mother. Back to the current day, Paul is being stopped by French officials at the airport for "passport problems". At this point we are 10-15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: when I wrote earlier that this movie brings the further stories of Paul, it is because writer-director Arnaud Desplechin made a previous film about this character, 1996's "My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument", with the role of Paul played by Mathieu Amalric, who reprises the role almost 20 years later. I admit I haven't seen the 1996 film, but that didn't stop me from checking this out, as I think Amalric is one of France's finer actors of this generation (check him also out in the recent "La Chambre Bleue", "The Grand Budapest Hotel", etc.). "My Golden Days" turns out to be a somewhat nostalgic look back to the 'good ol' days'. Of the "three souvenirs" referenced in the original French title, by far the longest amount of time is spent on Pauls' relationship with Esthel during Paul's university days, and set somewhere in the late 1980s. I grew up in nearby Belgium just a few years earlier (doing uni in the early 80s), and I can attest that the director captures the mood of those university years perfectly. It's probably the reason why this movie resonated with me so well, but I also want to emphasize that if you didn't grow up in Europe during those years, you'll still 'get it'. Newcomer Lou Roy-Lecollinet, in her first role on the big screen as Esthel, is simply outstanding, and surely we have not see the last of her. Last but not least, there is a bunch of great music featured in the film, both as to song placements and the original score, the latter courtesy of acclaimed French composer Grégoire Hetzel ("Incendies", "Intrusions"). A quick look around tells me that the score is available on Amazon France.

"My Golden Days" premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, to general critical acclaim. Not sure why it's take so long to play in US theaters, but this past weekend, the movie opened without any pre-release buzz or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I know what that usually means (a one week run). The Wednesday evening screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great. That's a darn shame. Hopefully this is a movie that can find a wider audience when the DVD finally comes out. If you are in the mood for a nostalgic yet effective foreign film that looks at what it was like growing up in France in the 80s, you cannot go wrong with this. "Trois Souvenirs de Ma Jeunesse" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

"My Golden Days" came out in 2015 as a late-breaking prequel to Desplechin's mid-90s classic "My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument," which may be the best film since "Lucky Jim" about life on the lower rungs of the academic ladder. Once again, Mathieu Amalric plays Paul Dédalus, now returning to France after a decade or so doing ethnographic fieldwork in the former Soviet Union; a farewell tryst with his gorgeous Russian girlfriend (Dinara Drukarova) unleashes a cascade of memories:

In a brief prologue, 10-year-old Paul flees his mentally unstable mother and takes refuge with his great-aunt and her Russian lover. Next, he recounts a daring high-school exploit to an urbane French spook, who wonders why he (and his passport) have doppelgangers in Australia (long story!), and in the longest, most significant episode, he relives an intense love affair with a classmate of his younger sister's, Esther, a clever, soulful, sexy, needy, neurotic young woman (she grows up to be Emmanuelle Devos in "My Sex Life"; here she's played brilliantly by Lou Roy-Lecollinet).

Trigger warning: Paul and Esther communicate in improvised love lyrics (as befits two alumni of the Lycée Baudelaire); Esther's pouty histrionics may evoke bittersweet memories of post-adolescent romance, or may just seem too precious to be endured. Your call!

This final episode starts to drag a bit as Paul soldiers on as an unfunded grad student in Paris, sleeping in hostels, couch surfing and ménage-à-trois-ing it with a congenial older couple while Esther mopes her way through "a stupid college course" and cheats on him repeatedly. Luckily, Desplechin props up his sometimes rambling storyline with ingenious staging and cinematography: When Paul first approaches Esther, he's surrounded by a windblown swirl of fallen leaves, which is echoed in the final scene as he strides into what looks like a blizzard of torn-out pages from a book (they're both "feuilles" in French, I guess; does it mean that this chapter in his life is coming to an end?); hard to put into words but it's a lovely effect.

Finally I should mention the first-rate period soundtrack: The Specials, De La Soul, "Atomic Dog" and Run-D.M.C. It's a remarkable film, though, again, a certain tolerance for post-Truffaut coming-of-age shenanigans is required.