My Golden Days

Cinema

The latest movie by the French director Arnaud Desplechin, opens April 8 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.

Arnaud Desplechin received the Cesar award as best director for My Golden Days, which is like a seach for a lost time, like a quest, and also simply an overwhelming love and life story.

The story, briefly...

Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.

Mathieu Amalric reprises the role of Paul Dédalus from Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life…Or How I Got into an Argument in MY GOLDEN DAYS, the character’s origin story. Paul, now an anthropologist, prepares to leave Tajikistan and reflects on his life. He has a series of flashbacks that unfold in three episodes (newcomer Quentin Dolmaire portrays Paul as an adolescent). The first includes his childhood in Roubaix, his mother's attacks of madness and his father's alienating depression. He next remembers his trip to the USSR, where a clandestine mission led him to offer up his own identity to a young Russian, whom he considers a phantom twin for the remainder of his life. Finally, he remembers University life and returning to his hometown to party with his sister and her best friend, his shifting circle of friends and their casual betrayals. And most of all, he remembers Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), the beautiful, rude, haughty soul and love of his life.

We wanted to watch this movie so much, because since My Sex Life…Or How I Got into an Argument, we know that they work so well together.

But in the end, it's the 2 newcomers, Quentin Domaire as young Paul, and Lou Roy-Lecollinet as the unforgettable Esther, who surprised us, moved us, intrigued us. Their respective performances are totally outstanding with an intensity and a maturity you would not expect from so young actors. They definitely make the movie real, beautiful, poetic and extreme.